Hewlett-Packard Co (HP) aims to decide whether to spin off its PC division by the end of this month, Hewlett-Packard chief executive Meg Whitman said at a conference on Tuesday, pushing up the company’s timetable.
Whitman, who succeeded Leo Apotheker as CEO of the world’s largest PC maker last month, was speaking at a conference on women in leadership sponsored by Fortune magazine. Under Apotheker, who resigned as CEO on Sept. 22, the company had said it would decide on the US$41 billion division’s fate by the end of the year. It was critical that Hewlett-Packard make the decision more quickly, Whitman said.
“We have to make a final decision about what to do with the PC division,” she said. “It’s a decision I want to make much faster than my predecessor. I want to make it before the end of October.”
Whitman took over from Apotheker after a series of jarring strategy shifts and three quarters of reduced sales forecasts cut short his tenure. Whitman told conference attendees in Laguna Niguel, California, it would be “very helpful” if the company met analysts’ expectations in the fiscal fourth quarter ending on Oct. 31.
According to Bloomberg data, analysts are predicting sales of US$32.1 billion and profit of US$1.13 a share.
“It would be very helpful if we made those with our heads high,” Whitman said. “I don’t have a lot of control over that.”
Integrating the company’s US$10.3 billion purchase of software company Autonomy Corp was also important, she said.
Whitman said she consulted with her family and mentors, including Republican US presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who advised her to work for Hewlett-Packard, which he called an “American icon.”
Losing the governor’s race in California last year taught her to communicate better with groups and weather criticism, she added. Hewlett-Packard employees need to recover from “a post-traumatic syndrome” as a result of the company’s succession of CEOs, Whitman said.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
POWER BUILDUP: Powered by Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell chips, the data center would support MediaTek’s computing power demand and business growth, the company said Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center with a maximum capacity of 45 megawatts to meet its rising demand for computing power required to develop new advanced chips for AI applications. The company has completed the first-phase computing power buildup at the data center in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), providing 15 megawatts of capacity to support its research and development (R&D) capabilities, despite an industrywide shortage of key components, MediaTek said. Supply constraints have plagued a wide range of key components, including memory chips, solid-state drives, power supply units and central
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
RSS