Generally, a slump is bad for business. HP has been feeling the heat due to a decline in overall PC shipments; sources indicate up to 14% fewer shipments so far this year. As a result, CEO Meg Whitman is reorganizing this side of the company.
Former head of the PC sector, Todd Bradley, is now an executive vice-president within strategic growth. This changes his role to expansion within China and contacting promising startup companies. Within the PC sector one of Bradley"s own employees will take over: former Lenovo and Acer employee Dion Weisler.
While it may appear to be a demotion for Bradley, his job change has been described as a "lateral move". It isn"t so much a demotion as a change, though there is some dispute. Trip Chowdhry has suggested Bradley made a number of errors before this point with the leading issue being his over-reliance on Windows 8 to ship units. Regardless of mistakes, it is worth remembering Bradley did put HP at the top of the global PC market for six straight years.
The internal change boosted HP"s stock prices yesterday to a high point of $25.44.
Source: Bloomberg