HP CEO : How to meaningfully grow revenue

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Since he joined as CEO in September 2010, Apotheker has infuriated analysts by perhaps being too forthcoming about the company’s prospects. His predecessor Mark Hurd was known for managing the company expertly for Wall Street and for stock price. (That he also gutted HP R&D and wounded morale inside the company are less-noted facts about his tenure.)

HP is facing a classic big-company problem: How to meaningfully grow revenue. But it's also facing an identity crisis. The company's trying to figure out whether it works best as a technology conglomerate that can be all things to all customers, or as a more streamlined operation that does only a few things well.

Just over a year ago, he sat before the board at German software maker SAP AG (ETR:SAP), who were contemplating essentially firing him from that company's CEO spot. At SAP, Mr. Apotheker lasted only 10 months. During that time he steered SAP into its first loss in seven years, faced backlash for failed price increase attempts during the recession, clashed with unions, and allegedly oversaw the theft of intellectual property from Oracle Corp. (ORCL) that cost SAP $1.3B USD in damages.

His decision, announced at the same time, to pony up $10 billion for Autonomy PLC, a British search vendor, further inflamed former HP loyalists. Taken together, the PC, tablet and Autonomy news lopped $12.5 billion off HP’s market cap within a day.

In some ways, Meg Whitman would be an odd choice to replace Apotheker. While Whitman is more of a celebrity, her record wasn't perfect at eBay. She resigned from eBay in 2008 amid slowing growth and disappointment over eBay's $2.6 billion gamble on the Skype Internet phone service. She's a billionaire who spent more than any candidate for a statewide office in U.S. history in unsuccessful Republican campaign for California governor last year. She spent at least $174 million, all but $30 million of it her own money.

Still, Whitman spent a decade guiding eBay and is a widely respected executive who took a website with 30 employees and $86 million in revenue and turned it into corporation with 15,000 people and nearly $6 billion in revenue. Whitman is among the people brought onto HP's board in a reshuffling shortly after Apotheker was hired. How she would fare as CEO amid HP's current restructuring is unclear.

Soon the shareholders had enough. A group of shareholder recently filed suit against HP for Mr. Apotheker's wild moves, claiming he defrauded investors by failing to disclose his risky plans.

The report that HP is considering Mr. Apotheker's dismissal closely files the news of that lawsuit, which was filed late last week. Reportedly, the board is considering offering the CEO position to former eBay, Inc. (EBAY) chief Megan Whitman on an interim, or even potentially long-term basis.

Ms. Whitman brings a decade of leadership as the CEO of the top internet auction site. Under her leadership the company successfully went public and grew small business sales. The company did reportedly overpay for Skype Technologies SA after getting in a bidding war with Google Inc. (GOOG) and Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO), which led to criticism. However, eBay did end up turning a profit on the purchase, when Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) decided to pay even more for Skype, boosting the return on eBay's remaining stake. Otherwise the only real blemish on Ms. Whitman's record is her failure to reduce revenue declines at eBay.