Hewlett-Packard Co., weighing the ouster of Chief ExecutiveOfficer Leo Apotheker, may struggle to find a new leader who canrevive the ailing computer maker after 11 months of strategy shiftsand slashed forecasts.

Hewlett-Packard's board plans to consider firing Apotheker, twopeople familiar with the matter said yesterday. It may appointformer EBay Inc. CEO Meg Whitman, a Hewlett-Packard director, toserve as an interim leader, said one of the people. The stock hadplunged 47 percent on his watch as of Sept. 20, the worstperformance in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

“It's not going to be easy,” said Michael Mullaney, who helpsmanage $9.5 billion, including Hewlett-Packard shares, at FiduciaryTrust in Boston. “They have to go back and redefine what they wantto be as a company, go back to the drawing board.”

Apotheker's ouster would leave the board looking for a leaderwho can do a better job helping Hewlett-Packard weather apersonal-computer slump while pushing further into the market forproducts that deliver computing services over the Web. CEOcandidates may also include Todd Bradley, who runsHewlett-Packard's PC unit, and David Donatelli, head of thebusiness in charge of servers, storage and networking, said JaysonNoland, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co. in SanFrancisco.

Other possible candidates that would make sense include GaryMoore, chief operating officer of Cisco Systems Inc., or SteveMills, who runs the software unit at International BusinessMachines Corp., said Shaw Wu, an analyst at Sterne Agee & LeachInc. in San Francisco.

Board Discussions
Hewlett-Packard directorsmet yesterday in committees and will gather today as a full board,according to a person close to the situation. Directors areconcerned about the stock price and its lack of improvement underApotheker's leadership, the person said. Some top Hewlett-Packardexecutives also opposed the acquisition of Autonomy Corp., a dealpushed by Apotheker, according to the person.

Hewlett-Packard, based in Palo Alto, California, jumped $1.51,or 6.7 percent, to $23.98 yesterday on the New York Stock Exchangeafter Bloomberg reported the possible management change. The stockis still down 44 percent since Apotheker, 58, became CEO on Nov. 1,compared with the 1.5 percent decline in the Standard & Poor's500 Index.

A new CEO would be Hewlett-Packard's seventh leader since 1999,when Carly Fiorina took over from Lewis Platt. Fiorina departed in2005 and was replaced on an interim basis by Robert Wayman, untilthe company named Mark Hurd to the top job. After Hurd resigned,Cathie Lesjak took the reins temporarily until Apotheker cameaboard.

PC Options
In addition to discussingApotheker's future, the board is reconsidering a proposal to spinoff the PC business, a person familiar with the matter said.Apotheker, the former CEO of German software maker SAP AG, said thecompany was exploring options for that unit on Aug. 18.

The same day, Hewlett-Packard agreed to buy software makerAutonomy for $10.3 billion. The company also said it wasdiscontinuing products running its WebOS mobile software, includingsmartphones and tablets — less than six months after saying itplanned to put the operating system on every Hewlett-Packardcomputer. Shares slumped after the announcements on concerns thatHewlett-Packard was paying too much for the acquisition and thestrategic changes showed a lack of deliberation.

Corporate Focus
With the Autonomy purchaseand shift in focus, Apotheker was pursuing a plan to lessen thecompany's reliance on lower-margin consumer products andconcentrate on more-profitable corporate businesses such asservers, software and network services. Any successor to Apothekerwill need to do a better job communicating the company's vision toshareholders, said Tony Ursillo, an analyst at Loomis Sayles &Co. in Boston, which owns Hewlett-Packard shares.

“Leo's tenure as CEO has been disastrous,” Ursillo said.

Under one scenario, the board may appoint Whitman until apermanent candidate emerges, according to a person with knowledgeof the board's thinking.

Whitman, 55, has been a Hewlett-Packard director since January,two months after she lost a bid to become governor of California.Before entering politics, Whitman spent 10 years at the helm ofEBay, the world's largest online marketplace, and established acareer at consumer-related companies.

Whitman's Consumer Expertise
ForHewlett-Packard, which is focusing on selling to businesses,Whitman is probably not the right person for the long term, saidDana Stalder, a partner at venture capital firm Matrix Partners inPalo Alto, California.

“It's not clear to me that someone who spent 30 years in theconsumer space is the right person for an enterprise technologycompany,” said Stalder, who worked under Whitman for seven years atEBay. “HP is increasingly becoming an enterprise company, given thefocus on enterprise software and services.”

Sales in Hewlett-Packard's technology solutions group, whichincludes services, software and enterprise storage and servers,rose 14 percent in the fiscal third quarter to $15.9 billion. Bycontrast, revenue in the business that comprises notebooks and PCsfell 3.3 percent to $9.59 billion.

Donatelli, executive vice president of the enterprise business,joined Hewlett-Packard in 2009 after 22 years at EMC Corp., theworld's biggest maker of storage computers. Sterne Agee's Wu, alongwith Noland from Baird, said Donatelli may be a candidate for thetop job.

Challenging IBM, Oracle
The company needs aleader who can mount a challenge to the biggest providers oftechnology for corporations, such as IBM, Oracle Corp. and Cisco,Wu said.

“They basically need a turnaround specialist,” Wu said. “It'snot going to be an easy role, whoever it is. Autonomy and the PCbusiness — they've got to figure out what to do there because noteveryone thinks those are necessarily the right moves.”

Bradley, who runs the PC business, said last month that he wouldlike to oversee the unit if it's spun out as a separate company.Bradley, 52, came to Hewlett-Packard in 2005 from PalmOne Inc.,where he spent four years.

“I'm very focused on continuing to work with the team of peoplethat have been so successful at making this the largest and mostprofitable PC company in the world,” Bradley said in an Aug. 23interview on “Bloomberg West.”

As much as anything, Hewlett-Packard has to find an executivewho can help the company get past a series of embarrassments thatdate back to a boardroom spying scandal in 2006 and continuedthrough last year, when former CEO Hurd quit amid sexual-harassmentallegations.

“It's been really hard to watch what seems to be a companythat's lost its way,” said Leslie Berlin, project historian ofSilicon Valley Archives at Stanford University. “The boardroomfights, the job cuts — it's almost unrecognizable from theHewlett-Packard that was once the star attraction in theValley.”

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