HP shares rose nearly 5 percent to $22.10, up $1.02 as of 11:15 am ET. Investors appear to be showing new confidence in HP and how CEO Meg Whitman is running the show. All the announcements that HP made yesterday bear repeating, because it was a busy afternoon:

 
Update: A few readers have written to point out I was wrong about HP’s old ticker symbol. It wasn’t HP but HWP. Silly me. Even so, if the Compaq name is headed for some lesser level of importance in HP’s future, then perhaps the Q in the ticker symbol, which was added as a nod to Compaq’s old symbol CPQ, to give the impression that the combination was more a merger of equals, should go. Given the choice between them, I would vote for HP. I should stress that I have zero indications that this is even under consideration, and is really just me ruminating.

Analysts had a mixed view. Chris Whitmore of Deutsche Bank Securities has been one of the more skeptical voices on HP’s turnaround prospects. “New sheriff, old game plan,” was the headline on his note to clients today. “We remain cautious on HP’s weak fundamentals, challenging macro conditions and deteriorating cash flow,” he wrote. Despite the beat on earnings, free cash flow — at $1.4 billion in the quarter — declined by half, pointing to what Whitmore calls “very poor earnings quality.” He rates HP as a “sell,” with a $20 price target.

Brent Bracelin of Pacific Crest Securities wrote that he remains unconvinced that an unexpected strength in HP’s PC unit is sustainable. “Apple and Samsung now account for 39 percent of market share across PCs, tablets and smartphones, and have a volume advantage relative to HP’s 6 percent share,” he wrote in a note to clients this morning. He rates the shares “market perform,” or neutral, and worries that HP’s biggest problem is that about half its sales are still tied to PCs and printers.

Whitman took to CNBC this morning to talk about HP’s situation. She portrayed the turnaround under way as about “10 to 15 percent” complete. That means there’s still a lot of work to do ahead. “We’ve laid a lot of pipe and done a lot of groundwork,” Whitman told the network’s anchors in a 13-minute appearance. I’ve embedded it below:

HP Shares closed down 52 cents to $23.46 a share, representing a drop of 2.17 percent in the wake of the official announcement of the plan, which AllThingsD reported yesterday.

While, on its face, the combination of the PC and printer groups into a single operation would save some operational costs, investors seem unconvinced that the move will make a sufficient difference to get the company moving in the right direction as CEO Meg Whitman has promised to do, though she’s conceded the turnaround will likely take years.

At least one analyst summed up the negative sentiment around the reorg. Rob Cihra of Evercore Partners called the move “uninspiring” and reminded everyone that HP made a similar move under former CEO Carly Fiorina back in early 2005 toward the end of her tenure. Her successor, Mark Hurd, broke the groups apart again before the year was out.

One thing Cihra appreciates is that Whitman is willing to admit where the troubles are: An over-levered balance sheet and a printing business that is suffering through a fundamental — not a seasonal — decline, among other problems. But, he writes in a research note issued to clients today, admitting the problem is only the first step. “It is encouraging for new CEO Meg Whitman to have started admitting issues others wouldn’t … Our concern is that any fixes look far from easy and likely involve a marathon, while ‘reorgs’ don’t even get HP to the starting line, in our view,” he wrote. Given the drop in HP’s share price, investors, for now, seem to agree.

In fairness to Whitman, she’s only six months into the job, and today’s move is only a first step. But the first step is pretty much an admission that a bigger change is on the way, including job cuts. “Everything is on the table,” Whitman told The Wall Street Journal today, though she declined to speculate on the number of jobs that might be eliminated. It’s going to be a rocky year at HP.

Some critics have said that this deal was the beginning of the end for the old HP, and indeed, Fiorina had to fight off a proxy challenge from shareholders — and from the company’s own board of directors, which opposed it. It has been nine years and change since that deal closed, and Fiorina lasted less than three years from that date.

A lot has gone on at HP since then. Mark Hurd has come and gone as CEO, and HP acquired EDS to bolster its IT services business. It has endured a boardroom spying scandal. It acquired Palm, and now plans to shut down its webOS business, after dismal sales of the TouchPad at Best Buy. Fiorina went on to get involved in politics, working for John McCain’s presidential campaign; then ran for, but did not win, a seat in the U.S. Senate.

And now HP’s Personal Systems Group (PSG) — the $40 billion (2010 sales) unit that combined HP and Compaq into a business that was big enough to eclipse Dell — is on its way out of the tent. HP said it is exploring “strategic options” for that business, which could include a sale to another company or maybe a spinoff to a buyer like Samsung. In a way, you might say that by spinning off the PSG, HP is undoing a big piece of Fiorina’s legacy.

Naturally someone thought to put Fiorina in front of a TV camera and ask her what she thought about all this. The video below is from Fiorina’s appearance yesterday on Bloomberg West, the new West Coast tech-heavy afternoon show produced at Bloomberg’s studio in San Francisco.

In the clip, Fiorina shows some sympathy for CEO Léo Apotheker and the need to drastically remake HP into something different from what it is now. She would know. She talks about another change that occurred on her watch: The 1999 spinoff of Agilent Technologies, the former HP Test and Measurement unit, the legacy of which went all the way back to the company’s 1939 founding in a Palo Alto garage, and as such was controversial among the rank and file. Agilent is still around, and reported a $684 million profit on $5.4 billion in sales last year.

No matter. CEOs have to think about the future, not the past, Fiorina says during the interview. In 2001, when the Compaq takeover was first proposed, the PC market was on the rise, and Dell seemed an unstoppable juggernaut. Now that HP is the world’s biggest PC maker, and Apple’s iPad has done permanent damage to the prospects for long-term growth in that marketplace, it’s time to look to the future once again. “Every CEO and board has to make a judgement about the future, not the past,” she says.

For one thing, January’s restructuring of the board of directors has left a bad taste in the mouth of a pair of shareholder advisory firms, who have publicly called upon HP investors to vote against the re-election of as many as three sitting directors and against some say-on-pay proposals.

Sources familiar with the situation confirmed to me that after today’s event, HP’s investor relations team plans to mount what’s being described as a “road show” to counter the recommendations to vote against management made by Institutional Shareholders Services and Glass Lewis among retail investors. Exactly who is involved and whom they plan to visit couldn’t be determined. HP had no comment about it.

At least part of the road show’s mission will be to drive home the highlights of the strategy that Apotheker lays out in his keynote today. But there is some nagging concern that a sufficient number of shareholders, put off by repeated instances of board room drama over the last decade — Carly Fiorina’s ouster in 2002, the pre-texting scandal in 2006, and last year’s departure former CEO Mark Hurd — may vote against the three directors standing for another term: Lawrence Babbio, Sari Baldauf, and Ken Thompson.

That enough investors would vote against management to make a difference may seem unlikely at first until you consider the number of shareholder lawsuits stemming from the Hurd affair that are currently pending both in federal courts and in the Delaware Chancery Court. The fear of an embarrassing defeat for HP and its new board at the annual meeting on March 23 isn’t an unreasonable one.

Then there are the larger questions. As Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi pointed out in a recent note to clients, HP’s stock has underperformed the S&P 500 since Hurd’s departure, and the lag has been driven mostly by uncertainty among investors about its strategy and about Apotheker himself. Its disappointing results in the first quarter didn’t help matters.

There are numerous questions around HP’s hardware strategy, particularly around the PC business. While it has promised to put the WebOS platform it acquired last year when it absorbed Palm into tablets and into every PC it ships, HP is still seen as far behind Apple on the tablet front. We all know why that is.

But the questions go deeper than that. Apotheker, a former CEO of the business software giant SAP, last week sent a strong signal in an interview with Bloomberg News that he plans to acquire some software companies.

What kind of acquisitions? He’s ruled out SAP, for one thing. And in a meeting with Bernstein’s Sacconaghi last month, he said any acquisitions would not be so large as to “keep investors awake at night,” meaning, Sacconaghi suggests, that they would probably not exceed $5 billion. Aside from buying software companies, he’s also signaled that the days of cuts–the hallmark of Mark Hurd’s tenure–are over. Cutting costs is out, investing is in.

But then there’s the larger issue about whether or not Apotheker can steer Hewlett-Packard, the storied Silicon Valley icon, on a course that restores its former glory. The question marks around him on this score are considerable because the task is just so huge. HP is a sprawling $126 billion juggernaut meaning change comes slowly, often in barely perceptible steps that leave impatient investors wondering what’s taking so long.

At the outset, the Apotheker’s strategy appears to be summed up pretty simply: Bring the market-leading position in hardware to bear and combine its offerings with a newly ascendant software business, which together will feed into an IT services business that aims to compete with IBM. It’s not going to be easy and the most important important thing that Apotheker has to do is inspire both analysts and shareholders alike that he’s the man to get the job done. As yet both are understandably skeptical mainly because Apotheker is an unknown quantity.

When Apotheker’s predecessor Mark Hurd took over at HP in 2005, there was very little doubt about what kind of CEO he would be: A relentless, unsentimental cost-cutter, and this much was clear before he was even officially on the job.

And while Apotheker has pointed tentatively in the direction he’d like to take HP, there are still more questions about him than there is certainty. His most important job will be to convince all concerned that he’s the man who can steer HP back on a course to greatness.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Another Advisory Firm Singles Out HP Director Babbio
• Shareholder Group Contends HP’s New Board Is Too Chummy
• “Peripatetic Polyglot” Léo Apotheker Wants to Save HP’s Soul by Buying Software Companies
• HP Earnings Today: Will Léo Apotheker Speak?
• Michael Dell Thinks HP Paid “Way Too Much” for 3Par
• Judge: HP Can Re-Investigate Hurd Departure
• Is This the HP Board That Will Allow Us to Stop Thinking About HP’s Board?
• Meg Whitman, Patricia Russo Among Five Joining HP Board
• HP Plans Another Probe Into Hurd Departure
• Léo Makes It Official: SAP’s Bill Wohl Joins Hewlett-Packard
• Want Enterprise Growth, HP? Think Services
• Mark Hurd Really Wants to Keep the Jodie Fisher Letter Private
• Mark Hurd Doesn’t Want You to Read the Letter That Cost Him His Job
• HP Networking Head: “People Are Tired of Paying for Cisco”
• HP Names Ex-SAP Chief Apotheker as CEO

The various boardroom dramas that have roiled HP’s directors during the last decade have often overshadowed HP itself. Last August’s blowup involving the departure of CEO Mark Hurd following accusations of sexual harassment occurred against the backdrop of lingering memories of the 2006 scandal involving the use of illegal methods to spy on journalists that ended the tenures of three HP directors.

Before that there was a public fight against HP’s 2002 acquisition of Compaq, led by dissident director Walter Hewlett, who eventually lost his seat. The Compaq deal ultimately cost Carly Fiorina her job at HP after a boardroom confrontation in 2005.

The result of all this is that boardroom drama has become something of an HP specialty, along with printers, computers and IT services. Criticizing the board’s actions has become something of a sport, with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison serving as the most public practitioner.

Shareholders appeared to agree that a change was overdue. HP shares shot up right away as word of a shake-up began to leak right before markets closed yesterday. HP shares closed up one percent today, trading at levels not seen since before Hurd’s abrupt departure in August.

The four departing directors were deeply involved in the Hurd kerfuffle. Two were Hurd defenders, and the other two wanted him out. All four volunteered. Chairman Ray Lane, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, said the debate over Hurd’s status “took a lot out of this board.”

It’s highly unusual for a company to change its board so deeply and so suddenly. The five new additions became directors effective today without any input from shareholders, and will serve until a vote can be held to approve them for a full one-year term at the next shareholder meeting in March.

Shareholders in theory have the power to offer their own slate of directors, but there’s little time for that, and even if some group were to do so, its only option would be to do so at its own expense. SEC rules governing the access to the proxy nominating process are currently being challenged in court by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable, and so the rules that would allow shareholders to more easily submit their own list of names are on hold pending the outcome.

Absent a proxy challenge, HP shareholders will be put in the position of accepting a board on which seven of 13 directors are brand-new. That’s a lot of new blood and may turn out to be the kind of change HP’s board needs. And getting the change done all at once rather than gradually may prove the better option.

However, I can’t help but wonder: In seeking to close out a period in which HP’s board became known more for its drama than anything else, is more drama the right answer?

After all Meg Whitman’s moneybagging and all those demon sheep thrown by Carly Fiorina, polls right now are showing that it is unlikely either of them is going to emerge victorious in tomorrow’s elections in California.

While the pair might pull it out, given how the GOP is surging this election cycle, most expect them not to do so.

Whitman has handed over a giant pile of her eBay-generated fortune in an attempt to be the Republican governor of the Golden State, which seemed to have been working–until it didn’t.

In fact, it seems as if her wealth–and various controversies around it, such as IllegalMaidGate–has diminished her efforts to paint herself as CEO of California.

While she was way up over the summer over Democratic rival Jerry Brown, she has been trailing him recently.

And, although the race has tightened up, surveys show Brown is still ahead, such as a Rasmussen Reports survey that showed him up 49 percent to Whitman’s 45 percent.

In the Senate contest, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Fiorina seems to be more certainly headed for defeat.

A new Field Research poll gives Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer 49 percent to Fiorina’s 41.

And while both candidates drastically oversold their business credentials as just the thing the troubled state needs, it seems the magic of tech in California does not necessarily transfer to voter enthusiasm quite so neatly.

But, let’s not end this election without another look at the infamous–and accidentally hysterical–”Demon Sheep” television ad by Fiorina against her GOP-nomination opponent Tom Campbell.

That video is followed by a very funny rejoinder, “Demon Sheep II: The Fleecing of California.”

Enjoy:

This is, after all, the third consecutive time that HP has gone outside to pick a leader, previously hiring Carly Fiorina from Lucent and Mark Hurd from NCR (NCR). And before deciding on Apotheker, the company was known to be considering three CEO-caliber candidates from its own roster–Todd Bradley, executive VP of HP’s personal systems group; Ann Livermore, vice president of HP’s $54 billion Enterprise Business; and Dave Donatelli, executive VP of Enterprise Servers and the guy who helped lead HP’s successful bidding war for 3Par. Donatelli is a relatively new hire and may not have had strong CEO aspirations (yet), but Livermore has been passed over the the top job three times now, and sources at HP say Bradley had been “hopeful” about becoming the company’s next CEO.

Has Apotheker’s appointment made these three execs flight risks?

J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz doesn’t think so. “Livermore has been an HP-lifer and credited with integrating the enterprise services and hardware practices,” he wrote in a note to clients today. “We think [she] will want to stick around as the enterprise solutions mantra continues. Meanwhile, Bradley has been instrumental in augmenting the personal systems business, and we think he will be focused on next leveraging the Palm acquisition into a potential disruptive force in mobile communications environments. Lastly, Dave Donatelli is still relatively new to HP, and we expect him to be busy integrating the 3Par and 3Com assets, both deals of which he was the chief architect, based on our conversations with industry contacts.”

Makes sense, right? Livermore is a veteran and her hopes for the CEO spot couldn’t have been too high after being passed over for it twice. Donatelli has been at the company only a little over a year, reports to Livermore and is still making his mark at the company. And Bradley, though surely disappointed, has HP’s developing webOS-based device business in which to take solace. That said, if there is a flight risk among these three, he seems the most likely. Jokingly introduced as the CEO of HP at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference earlier this week, Bradley quipped, “Not yet.” And it seems clear he had his eye on the job. But will losing it to Apotheker inspire him to hop trains? Tough to say. In any event, were he to threaten to leave, HP (HPQ) would surely do all that it could to keep him (maybe it already is). Losing him at this point would be terrible for the company’s consumer business.

Wall Street loved his obsession with cutting costs, but employees did not. He brought even more major changes to the company’s once paternalistic culture, much like his predecessor Carly Fiorina, who pretty much killed the old HP Way.

With Hurd at the helm, HP became an even tougher place to work, with even less emphasis on innovating anything new.

Some former and current employees said that under Hurd, HP’s once collegial workplace has changed again for the worse.

“He was profane, a bully, autocratic, threatening, demeaning, vindictive, and rude,” wrote Chuck House, a veteran of HP, in his blog. House is now executive director of Media X, a Stanford University industry affiliate research program on media and technology, and co-author of a 2009 book, “The H-P Phenomenon.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Even for a story in which everyone involved insists there was no funny business going on, that’s a perfectly natural reaction and I get the prurient interest.

Thus, the resignation of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) head Mark Hurd and the private settlement of sexual harassment claims with consultant Jodie Fisher have morphed into a juicy summer potboiler, complete with claims and counterclaims, and even a cheesy demo reel (see below).

And also the odd appearance of Gloria Allred, lawyer to seemingly every celebrity mistress in California. Fisher said in a statement (also see below) she was no such thing, and was “saddened” by Hurd’s ouster.

Seems like crocodile tears to me, but today, when the markets open, we’ll see if any of it matters to investors or if they have moved on to trying to determine the next moves for the tech giant and its leadership.

Let’s hope Wall Street is less interested in gory details and more in business performance.

Still, already, the judgment on the Hurd debacle has hurt HP shareholders badly, shaving 9.7 percent off its shares, which closed down $4.50 at $41.85.

Encouragingly, the stock was up 1.8 percent in after-hours trading. But continued swirl around the company–especially about the large exit compensation package Hurd grabbed on his way out–could keep the stock in the doldrums for a while.

That’s too bad, since HP just put itself in the limelight with the acquisition of Palm and indications that it fully intended to compete in the fast-moving smartphone and tablet market with the webOS software platform.

Now, instead of turning up the public effort this year on making its consumer offerings more like Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG), the company is likely to be occupied answering questions that are not exactly on point.

As in: Who knew what and when and how was it expensed?

That means a very important message that HP needs to be getting out in the months ahead is not likely to break through for a while.

And that is why it is critical that HP’s board–which seems to have acted unusually swiftly and decisively with regard to Hurd’s missteps–move even faster to install a credible CEO at HP, especially one who can get everyone off the current meme and back onto the challenges facing the business.

In fact, much as Hurd did when he replaced Carly Fiorina in 2005 and quickly began to clean up her obvious mess. Except for a few bumps, the stock rebounded in his tenure, which was marked by stability and, well, dullness.

No longer.

In a statement Hurd made as he stepped down late last week, he said:

“I realized there were instances in which I did not live up to the standards and principles of trust, respect and integrity that I have espoused at HP.”

Apparently not. Now shareholders are about to find out the price of his failure.

Until then, here’s Fisher’s demo reel video and statement, as well as the classic “Nudge, Nudge” skit from Monty Python:

Jodie Fisher statement on ex-Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd –

It’s worth checking out an article in the New York Times today that points to a very questionable, but–as it turned out–politically savvy angel investment made by former eBay CEO and now Republican candidate for California governor Meg Whitman.

The piece, by Michael Luo, alleges that Whitman’s $1 million investment in late 2008 in a Hollywood entertainment company called Tools Down! Productions was made to ease a prominent Republican strategist away from working for her rival for the GOP nod.

That would be Steve Poizner, who lost to Whitman in the recent primary and who was close to working with Mike Murphy. Instead, with a little help from the piles of cash Whitman made from eBay (EBAY) stock, Murphy never took the job.

Well, not the Poizner job, at least. After telling people he was sick of politics and then getting the Whitman money days later for his still credit-free movie production company, Murphy became an adviser to Whitman a year later.

The bigger story the Times is touting, but does not quite deliver, is the advent of super-rich candidates in races this round, including another tech exec, former Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CEO Carly Fiorina. She won the California GOP Senate primary.

This kind of thing has happened before, of course.

But what’s interesting is to see Silicon Valley’s digitally enabled moneybags step up to the very stained political table and jump right into the game.

What’s next? Google (GOOG) co-founder Sergey Brin buying everyone in San Francisco lattes for life to become mayor? Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s bid for president of the United States, via the leveraging of embarrassing photos from the social networking site?

And thank goodness Bill Gates of Microsoft (MSFT) never wanted to run for office.

The Whitman campaign told the Times that the investment was disclosed and justified in that she had ample entertainment interest from her days as a strategic planning exec at Disney (DIS) and also as a board member of DreamWorks Animation SKG (DWA).

Which is exactly what they would say, of course.

Thus, perhaps it is time to take a moment with Jimmy Stewart in a video clip from the classic film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” of his most potent “Lost Causes” scene:

While there have been politicians running for office in California before who have worked in the tech sector, there’s no doubt that the prospects for two of Silicon Valley’s more prominent execs–Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman–represent an unusual and interesting situation in the state’s history.

With the tech sector a beacon of hope in a very rough economy and a symbol of health compared with a debt-saddled government, it’s no surprise that both candidates are touting their time as CEOs of two of California’s better known digital giants.

Whitman ran eBay (EBAY) and Fiorina helmed Hewlett-Packard (HPQ).

And, as they both did in their Republican primary races, they’re pushing that business experience very hard.

“Career politicians in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., be warned: You now face your worst nightmare,” said Whitman in her victory speech after winning the GOP primary for governor, referring to herself and Fiorina, who is vying for a Senate seat. “Two businesswomen from the real world who know how to create jobs, balance budgets and get things done.”

But will their narrative of outsider, maverick, high-tech corporate execs versus entrenched career politicians–Democratic candidates Jerry Brown and Sen. Barbara Boxer, who are facing Whitman and Fiorina respectively–play well with voters, and, more importantly, how accurate is their depiction as can-do techies?

That’s something to pay attention to, since a lot will surely be riding on their golden portrayal as business successes in the Golden State versus their opponents’ ability to paint a more cloddish picture of their corporate tenures.

And, just from a quick reading of their Web sites, both Fiorina and Whitman have to tread very carefully.

For example, the bio for Fiorina on her site notes:

“Carly served as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett-Packard Company from 1999 to 2005, leading the reinvention of the legendary company, successfully steering it through the dot-com bust and the worst technology recession in 25 years. During her tenure, HP’s revenues doubled, from $44 billion to $88 billion, with improved profitability in every product category. Today, HP is the largest technology company in the world.”

That certainly–and not surprisingly–leaves out the layoffs, the myriad controversies over her leadership and, as has been depicted in much press coverage and several books, her none-too-smooth heave-ho from HP with a big fat exit payout to cushion the blow.

In fact, it has been current CEO Mark Hurd who has deservedly gotten a lot of the credit for getting HP moving again.

In addition, while HP is certainly the largest tech company in terms of employees, it is nowhere near the largest in terms of anything else that counts, such as stock market valuation.

HP’s market cap is currently $112 billion, compared with $230 billion for Microsoft (MSFT), $251 billion for Apple (AAPL) and even $168 billion for IBM (IBM).

On her Web site, the tale of Whitman is also rich in wow:

“At eBay, Meg made history. Meg steered eBay through the dot-com rise and fall that saw the vast majority of high-flying start-ups crash and burn, while eBay turned in one quarter of dramatic growth after another. When she joined eBay, the company had just $4.7 million in revenues and 30 employees; when she retired in March of 2008, ten years later, the company had nearly $8 billion in revenues and 15,000 employees worldwide–with millions of users in California alone.”

It’s all pretty much true, and throwing in California auction fans is a nice touch, too.

But it also leaves out a laundry list of problems Whitman left behind, from eBay’s slowness to innovate after its initial success, thereby almost totally missing Web 2.0, to its struggles to reinvigorate its main market business to a series of questionable acquisitions–Skype calling!–made in her decade in charge.

To be fair, any CEO tenure is a mixed bag, and there is not one tech exec who has not presided over a disaster or two.

That said, if both Fiorina and Whitman are selling themselves as Silicon Valley wunderkinds who can fix what’s broke in California, they are going to have to get ready to defend their business records over the next five months just the same as the career pols they are aiming to unseat.

Apple (AAPL) CEO and Co-founder Steve Jobs will appear at the eighth D: All Things Digital, in an interview on the opening night, kicking off our tech and media conference that will also include famed Hollywood director James Cameron, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, among others.

(Jobs is pictured above at D5 in 2007.)

Jobs has been onstage many times at D, including in a famous joint session with Microsoft (MSFT) Co-founder Bill Gates. In the interview, which was conducted by Walt Mossberg and me, the pair of tech legends talked about their long history in the industry (you can see the video of that interview below).

There is much to talk to Jobs about, obviously, including the new iPad, the mobile market and the iPhone, its tense relationship with Google (GOOG) and the next innovations from the Silicon Valley computer icon.

It should be a news-filled year at D. Also onstage: Ballmer, who is appearing with the software giant’s chief software architect Ray Ozzie. In addition, Cameron will discuss the impact of tech on the film industry and his mega-hit movie “Avatar.”

Also onstage: Steve Burke, COO of Comcast (CMCSK), which recently purchased NBC Universal; Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski; former AOL (AOL) leaders Steve Case and Ted Leonsis; Peter Chou, CEO of HTC, which is embroiled in an ugly legal fight with Apple; John Donahoe, president and CEO of eBay (EBAY); former Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CEO Carly Fiorina, who is now a candidate for U.S. Senate in California; Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm (QCOM); Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation SKG; Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford (F); Richard Rosenblatt, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Demand Media, in a session with Editor-in-Chief, President and CEO Paul Steiger of ProPublica; Vivian Schiller, president and CEO of National Public Radio; and, last but hardly least, Zuckerberg of Facebook (yes, Mark, there will be a question about competition you’ll need to answer–and not via a question about the question either–be prepared!).

We also have a few more speakers to announce, so stay tuned.

Here is the Jobs-Gates video from 2007:

And here’s our official press release:

STEVE JOBS, JAMES CAMERON AND STEVE BALLMER TO SPEAK AT THE EIGHTH ANNUAL “D: ALL THINGS DIGITAL” CONFERENCE

NEW YORK (April 27, 2010)–All Things Digital today announced the speaker lineup for the eighth D: All Things Digital, The Wall Street Journal executive conference that will be held from June 1-3, 2010 near Los Angeles, Calif.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs will be this year’s opening-night speaker, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will make his fourth appearance and “Avatar” director James Cameron will appear onstage at D for the first time on the annual event’s second night.

Founded by co-producers Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher in 2003, the D conference is a gathering of the most influential figures in media and technology. Each year, Mossberg and Swisher put these top players to the test onstage during unrehearsed, unscripted conversations. The results are candid, entertaining sessions that provide glimpses into the strategies of the industry’s most creative thinkers.

D8 will also showcase leading executives from the mobile, digital, media, automotive and political arenas including:

• Steve Burke, COO of Comcast
• Steve Case, Chairman and CEO of Revolution
• Peter Chou, CEO of HTC
• John Donahoe, President and CEO of eBay
• Carly Fiorina, Candidate for U.S. Senate, California
• Julius Genachowski, Chairman of the FCC
• Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm
• Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation SKG
• Ted Leonsis, Vice Chairman Emeritus of AOL, Chairman of Revolution Money and Owner of Washington Capitals
• Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford
• Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect of Microsoft
• Richard Rosenblatt, Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO of Demand Media
• Vivian Schiller, President and CEO of National Public Radio
• Paul Steiger, Editor-in-Chief, President and CEO of ProPublica
• Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Facebook

Live blogs and photos from each session will be available on AllThingsD.com during each interview, with video highlights posted shortly afterwards.

The D conference has been sold out since January. For more information, full D coverage and video of past conferences including the historic joint appearance by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at D5, see http://allthingsd.com/d/.

D8 is sponsored by AMD, Houlihan Lokey, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, NYSE Euronext, Qualcomm and Thomson Reuters.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100427/welcome-back-steve-apple-ceo-jobs-will-appear-onstage-at-d8/feed/ 12 http://allthingsd.com/20100219/cisco-ends-reseller-agreement-with-h-p/ http://allthingsd.com/20100219/cisco-ends-reseller-agreement-with-h-p/#comments Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:00:58 +0000 Ben Worthen http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=21490 Cisco Systems (CSCO) on Thursday said it was dropping H-P (HPQ) from its reseller program, capping off a year in which the two tech giants have increasingly encroached on one another’s turf.

The change, which will take effect April 30, means that H-P will no longer have access to information like Cisco’s product roadmaps, which help partners make long-term plans for how to position Cisco gear. H-P will still be able to sell Cisco products to its customers, but it won’t be eligible for rebates and other incentives.

Cisco’s move is the latest sign of tension between the one-time partners. The networking giant used to count then H-P CEO Carly Fiorina among its board members, and H-P used to encourage its sales force to push Cisco’s networking gear. But last March Cisco unveiled a server system that competes with one of H-P’s core products. In November H-P bought 3Com so that its networking division could better take on Cisco.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100219/cisco-ends-reseller-agreement-with-h-p/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100108/the-fleeting-fickleness-of-it/ http://allthingsd.com/20100108/the-fleeting-fickleness-of-it/#comments Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:43:29 +0000 Nitrozac and Snaggy http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=19936

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100108/the-fleeting-fickleness-of-it/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091104/former-hp-ceo-announces-senate-candidacy/ http://allthingsd.com/20091104/former-hp-ceo-announces-senate-candidacy/#comments Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:46:31 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=28151

“I don’t think John McCain could run a major corporation. I don’t think Barack Obama could run a major corporation. I don’t think Joe Biden could, either. But it is not the same as being the president or vice president of the United States. It is a fallacy to suggest that the country is like a company. To run a business, you have to have a lifetime of experience in business, but that’s not what Sarah Palin, John McCain, Barack Obama or Joe Biden are doing.”

– Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina

Her dreams of heading up the World Bank dashed, former Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CEO Carly Fiorina, the architect of one of the worst tech mergers in history, has turned her attention to the U.S. Senate.

After months of speculation, Fiorina officially announced her candidacy today. She’ll run as a Republican against Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.). Of course, to do that, she must first win the Republican primary. Fiorina broke the news in an op-ed in the Orange County Register.

“Admittedly, I have not always been engaged in the electoral process, and I should have been,” she wrote. “For many years I felt disconnected from the decisions made in Washington and, to be honest, really didn’t think my vote mattered because I didn’t have a direct line of sight from my vote to a result. I realize that thinking was wrong.”

Reflecting on her personal history, Fiorina continues: “As I grew throughout my career, beginning as a secretary and eventually becoming a CEO, I saw how government impacted business. I learned more as a member of advisory boards at the State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA. I now understand, in a very real way, that the decisions made by the Senate impact every family and every business, of any size, in America. This is what motivates me to run for the U.S. Senate. And so today I am announcing my candidacy to serve the people of California as your next U.S. senator….Together we can turn things around.”

Together we can turn things around? Not if Fiorina’s performance at HP is any indication. Before she was forced out of the company by its board of directors, she was so at odds with the uniquely Californian “HP Way” that her corner office could have been powered solely by Bill Hewlett spinning in his grave.

UPDATE: Here’s another Fiorina op-ed from earlier this year in which she discusses executive pay. Unsurprisingly, she is against President Obama’s efforts to restore “common sense” to CEO compensation. And why wouldn’t she be? After all, she walked away from HP with a $21 million severance package.

UPDATE: For those of you just joining us over at CNet, the headline is a joke referring to HP’s ill-starred merger with Compaq.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091104/former-hp-ceo-announces-senate-candidacy/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090930/hp/ http://allthingsd.com/20090930/hp/#comments Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:53:01 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=25692 Four years after separating its PC business from its imaging and printing group, Hewlett-Packard is planning to merge them, undoing one of Mark Hurd’s first big moves as CEO.

“People familiar with the situation” tell The Wall Street Journal that the plan under consideration would combine HP’s printer and PC businesses under Todd Bradley, who currently oversees only the latter. It’s not yet clear what such a move will mean for Vyomesh Joshi, who heads up HP’s Imaging and Printing Group. Presumably, the company will keep him around. Under his leadership, HP’s printer business generated more than 30 percent of the company’s total profits during its last quarter.

In any event, should the plan be approved (and it is contingent on Hurd’s approval), it will bring HP back full circle to 2005 when then-CEO Carly Fiorina merged HP’s printer division with its struggling PC division. Except now that printer growth has slowed, it’s the PC business that’s the powerhouse.

Tough choices, *cough*, eh Mark?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090930/hp/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20090930/hp-to-merge-pc-and-printing-divisions/ http://allthingsd.com/20090930/hp-to-merge-pc-and-printing-divisions/#comments Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:39:00 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=25700

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090930/hp-to-merge-pc-and-printing-divisions/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090824/weekend-roundup-meg-and-carly-on-the-trail/ http://allthingsd.com/20090824/weekend-roundup-meg-and-carly-on-the-trail/#comments Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:26:20 +0000 Eric Savitz http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=14671 There were a flurry of stories over the weekend about the electoral dreams of former eBay (EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman and former Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CEO Carly Fiorina. Whitman is the current Republican front-runner in the race to be be the next governor of California. Fiorina has formed a committee to mull a run against Barbara Boxer for a U.S. Senate seat. Both are supposed to bring financial savvy to the government roles they seek, although both left amid serious questions about their job performance.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090824/weekend-roundup-meg-and-carly-on-the-trail/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081103/john-mccain-and-barack-obama-talk-tech/ http://allthingsd.com/20081103/john-mccain-and-barack-obama-talk-tech/#comments Mon, 03 Nov 2008 08:00:33 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=5965

In advance of tomorrow’s elections, here’s a pair of videos of the two presidential candidates, Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, talking about tech.

While Obama has many more supporters in the tech and Internet sectors in terms of numbers, including Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt, McCain’s include Cisco (CSCO) CEO John Chambers, former eBay (EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman and former Hewlett-Packard (HP) head Carly Fiorina.

And while tech is not exactly issue No. 1 with either of them, here is McCain talking about it in the entire interview he did at the fifth D: All Things Digital conference in 2007 (he also discusses Iraq and other topics in the interview) and a new, much shorter three-minute video just posted by Obama on tech policy:

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081103/john-mccain-and-barack-obama-talk-tech/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080918/gops-newest-platform-techno-ignorance/ http://allthingsd.com/20080918/gops-newest-platform-techno-ignorance/#comments Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:33:21 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=5247

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080918/gops-newest-platform-techno-ignorance/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20080918/gops-newest-platform-techno-ignorance-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20080918/gops-newest-platform-techno-ignorance-2/#comments Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:33:21 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=5247

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080918/gops-newest-platform-techno-ignorance-2/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080917/qotd-34/ http://allthingsd.com/20080917/qotd-34/#comments Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:04:48 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=5133

I don’t think John McCain could run a major corporation. I don’t think Barack Obama could run a major corporation. I don’t think Joe Biden could, either. But it is not the same as being the president or vice president of the United States. It is a fallacy to suggest that the country is like a company. To run a business, you have to have a lifetime of experience in business, but that’s not what Sarah Palin, John McCain, Barack Obama or Joe Biden are doing.”

– Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina says Sarah Palin’s not the only politician unqualified to lead HP

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080917/qotd-34/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080826/iphone-to-russia-with-love/ http://allthingsd.com/20080826/iphone-to-russia-with-love/#comments Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:00:14 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=3911

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080826/iphone-to-russia-with-love/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080826/hp-eds/ http://allthingsd.com/20080826/hp-eds/#comments Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:01:45 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080512/hp-eds/ Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) has wrapped up its acquisition of technology services giant Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS), the company’s largest purchase since the $20 billion merger former HP CEO Carly Fiorina orchestrated with Compaq Computers six years ago.

Thankfully, it wasn’t nearly so rancorous.

Valued at $13.9 billion when it was first announced, the deal will more than double the size of HP’s consulting and outsourcing business. It will likely do the same to the $16.6 billion in revenue from services the company made in 2007.

When the dust has settled around the merger, HP will be the second-largest provider of consulting and outsourcing services, behind IBM (IBM). But it will take some doing to get there. “It’s a very significant combination,” Gartner’s (IT) Ben Pring said when the deal was announced back in May. “[But] people who are skeptical of big integrations will have a field day around this. It’s putting together two large businesses with two different heritages. It’s going to be a big culture clash.”

And if HP manages to pull it off? Well, as Fiorina would likely tell you, bigger is better if you can do it right.

“It’s somewhat amusing because we’ve seen this play before. I think this is sort of further evidence that HP really does see value at scale basically, at size,” Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff said in May. “One of the things we’ve seen very clearly over the last couple years is that Carly really had the right idea, she just couldn’t execute on it. She wasn’t wrong for saying HP needed to be bigger, effectively,” said Haff. “If (the merger) does go through we’re going to end up with an HP that looks a lot like Carly wanted it to look.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080826/hp-eds/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080826/hp-eds-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20080826/hp-eds-2/#comments Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:01:45 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080512/hp-eds/ Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) has wrapped up its acquisition of technology services giant Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS), the company’s largest purchase since the $20 billion merger former HP CEO Carly Fiorina orchestrated with Compaq Computers six years ago.

Thankfully, it wasn’t nearly so rancorous.

Valued at $13.9 billion when it was first announced, the deal will more than double the size of HP’s consulting and outsourcing business. It will likely do the same to the $16.6 billion in revenue from services the company made in 2007.

When the dust has settled around the merger, HP will be the second-largest provider of consulting and outsourcing services, behind IBM (IBM). But it will take some doing to get there. “It’s a very significant combination,” Gartner’s (IT) Ben Pring said when the deal was announced back in May. “[But] people who are skeptical of big integrations will have a field day around this. It’s putting together two large businesses with two different heritages. It’s going to be a big culture clash.”

And if HP manages to pull it off? Well, as Fiorina would likely tell you, bigger is better if you can do it right.

“It’s somewhat amusing because we’ve seen this play before. I think this is sort of further evidence that HP really does see value at scale basically, at size,” Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff said in May. “One of the things we’ve seen very clearly over the last couple years is that Carly really had the right idea, she just couldn’t execute on it. She wasn’t wrong for saying HP needed to be bigger, effectively,” said Haff. “If (the merger) does go through we’re going to end up with an HP that looks a lot like Carly wanted it to look.”

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