14 DAY TRIAL // HP's decision to back out of the PC market shocked mostly everyone involved in the IT industry, and this includes former company director Tom Perkins, who calls the maneuver a corporate suicide.
HP has been fairly active on the enterprise front as of late, but there is no question that the main thing getting it in the news nowadays is its decision in regards to PCs.
Basically, the company announced it was getting out of the PC business altogether, something that shocked quite a number of people, what with it being the world's top supplier of such things.
Speculations of who might get the PC unit (Samsung was seen as likely) and competitors' reactions followed swiftly.
Now, HP's own former director, Tom Perkins, expressed his own opinion on the matter, one that more or less echoes that of a large part of onlookers.
"I didn't know there was such a thing as corporate suicide, but now we know that there is. It's just astonishing.," he said.
The fact that HP's stock fell 44% since July does seem to enforce this view of the matter, although the outfit has not yet reached the point of no return.
For those that want the situation more succinctly summed up, HP's current CEO Leo Apotheker wants to turn HP into a specialized enterprise software maker like IBM and Oracle.
Granted, that area of the industry does offer a larger chance for profits, but forcing entry in that area at the expense of the entire stake in the consumer electronics market is not something that many people see as wise.
Much of the current situation is blamed on the way Mark Hurd (now with Oracle), the former CEO, was sacked over sexual harassment allegations, which proved unfounded, and the fact that Apotheker had no hardware experience to speak of when he took the post.