HP CEO to get the ax soon?

Following a controversial move to stop webOS operations and spinoff its consumer PC business, Hewlett-Packard CEO Leo Apotheker may well be on his way out, sources said. "Hewlett-Packard has lowered its sales forecasts three times since Apotheker became CEO in November, and he’s presided over strategy swings that left shareholders doubting his credibility," said the Bloomberg report. Under Apotheker's mere 10-month watch of HP, the company's stock reportedly plunged by 47 percent, with investor exasperation at its highest in more than a decade. “There’s certainly a lot of investor discontent with them," said Amit Daryanani, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets in San Francisco, in the Bloomberg report “There’s widespread frustration with the fact that numbers have been cut three times since he’s been there." All Things D reported that hours after posting the news about the possible ouster of Apotheker from his post, HP shares spiked "almost eight percent," adding as much as $3 billion to HP's market valuation. But who will replace the former SAP CEO at the top helm of the IT giant? All Things D said HP's board is looking at former eBay CEO Meg Whitman to replace the current HP leader. "Sources said Whitman has been contemplating taking another big exec job, after a 10-year stint at eBay, which was followed by an unsuccessful run as the Republican nominee for governor of California last year," the report said. Analysts, however, are half-and-half about Whitman's appointment, considering she doesn't have the experience of running a hardware-based IT company. “She’s on the board and is a logical interim CEO, but not a logical long-term CEO," said Jayson Noland, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co. in San Francisco, in the Bloomberg report. “She doesn’t have enterprise experience." HP's board, due to meet this week, is reportedly thinking of revisiting the decision to spinoff the PC business, given that the idea "wasn't studied as thoroughly." In August, HP announced that it would be spinning off its consumer PC business and would instead focus on enterprise services, also announcing the planned acquisition of enterprise software firm Autonomy. The decision to acquire Autonomy, however, was not met with enthusiasm by shareholders, along with the news that HP did not find a buyer for its PC business before announcing the spinoff plans. — TJD, GMA News