Three bullet points: Apotheker's battle plan for Apple, IBM, the world

16.03.2011
The world of new Hewlett-Packard CEO Leo Apotheker is lot more complicated than the one imagined by his predecessors.

The major threat faced by Carly Fiorina, HP's CEO from 1999-05, was primarily IBM, and to certain extent, Sun. Cisco (Fiorina served on its board) and Oracle (Fiorina delivered a keynote at Oracle's big user conference) were friends, and its relationship with Microsoft was solid.

Fiorina's successor, Mark Hurd, (HP CEO 2005-10), was principally focused on surviving the recession and fortifying the company in its continuing battle against IBM, particularly versus its fast growing services division.

In 2008, HP bought EDS, gaining a huge services boost.

The next two years, competition escalated as Cisco started selling servers, HP bought Cisco rival 3Com, Oracle bought Sun and then last summer hired Hurd. The Microsoft relationship was still solid through the Hurd resignation last summer.

And the business has become even more complicated for Apotheker.