14 DAY TRIAL // It would appear that Advanced Micro Devices, even after months of searching for a new chief executive officer, still has not succeeded in finding a suitable replacement for Dirk Meyer.
Not having a leader is definitely not a good thing for any organization, and while an Interim can keep things in check for a short while, the mid to long term plans are still up in the air if no actual CEO is chosen.
For those that don't remember, about two months ago, Dirk Meyer, the Chief Executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices, announced he was resigning.
If anything, this was a very sudden move, one that certain officials, like Co-Founder Jerry Sanders, didn't agree with, according to later reports that said Meyer had been removed because of a presumably unsatisfactory plan for tablet PCs.
Either way, the CEO left and, even though it has now been two months since the deed, the Sunnyvale, California-based company is still leaderless.
Granted, CFO Thomas Seifert has been filling the seat of interim in the meantime, but while this is enough to manage the company's short term plans, the mid to long-term strategies are more or less up in the air at the moment.
Naturally, in such a situation, the board should be looking for new head figures but, oddly enough, the market is quite bereft of any reports regarding such movements, something certain others also remarked on.
Oddly enough, however, there has been word of no such overtures, unsuccessful or otherwise, and any further delays may cause investors to wonder what will become of the CPU, GPU and APU maker if it remains adrift in the sea of uncertainty for much longer.
A while ago, we toyed with the possibility of Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president and general manager of Ultra Mobility Group (UMG) at Intel, assuming the mantle, since he made the surprising move of leaving his own position not long ago.
Unfortunately, even now, nothing is known of just what AMD's board intends to do next, a situation made even worse by the fact that, besides Meyer, chief operating officer Robert Rivet and corporate vice president for strategy Marty Seyer also left.
No doubt some people have started joking about possible sabotage by infiltrators from the rivals the company has on the CPU and graphics markets but, jokes aside, AMD really should, objectively speaking, solve this dilemma as quickly as possible, even if that implies, as some analysts speculated, looking beyond the territory of chip makers.