HP's Mark Hurd: The Biggest Winner

Just for a moment, forget about revenue and earnings per share. The most interesting number out of Hewlett-Packard's earnings announcement this week was this:

15.8%.

That's the profit margin CEO Mark Hurd and his team squeezed out of HP's (HPQ) services business on the way to an impressive first fiscal quarter. The significance of the number? When Hurd bought lumbering services giant EDS for $13.9 billion a year and a half ago, MORE

As flash recovers, fears of another bubble

Flash memory might rule the roost when it comes to gadget storage – all the sleekest devices from smartphones to the upcoming iPad use it – but it can be tough to make a profit selling the stuff.

No one knows that better than Eli Harari. As founder and CEO of flash memory maker SanDisk (SNDK), he has been through a roller-coaster year.

Late 2008 was the worst of times. In a MORE

[video] Yahoo Labs chief talks search strategy

I caught up with Prabhakar Raghavan, SVP of Yahoo Labs and search strategy, at Yahoo's Silicon Valley headquarters this week to talk about how the company plans to build out a search business even after outsourcing the core technology to Microsoft. (YHOO) (GOOG) (MSFT)

Yahoo: We can have it both ways

The online giant argues new features will win back lost search share

Yahoo brought out its big engineering guns on Wednesday to convince the world that it hasn't given up on search.

The search story has gotten complicated for Yahoo (YHOO) in recent months. Last July CEO Carol Bartz announced a deal to outsource core search technology to Microsoft (MSFT), which looked like an admission of defeat. Assuming the deal passes regulatory MORE

Toyota's low-risk dialogue on Digg

If you're Toyota (TM) right now, the last thing you want is more surprises. That might explain why Jim Lentz, president of the U.S. sales division, will be fielding questions about the automaker's troubles on social media site Digg today at 2 p.m. PT, 5 p.m. ET; it actually looks to be a pretty low-risk affair.

Normally, "low-risk" and "Digg" don't go together in the world of corporate PR. On Digg, MORE

John Chambers: Recovery continues, Cisco to hire in the U.S.

John Chambers is often in a sunny mood, but on Wednesday he had some obvious reasons: Cisco posted financial results that blew past Wall Street's expectations, signaling that despite the rough economy businesses are spending on technology again.

I caught up with him after the earnings announcement to get some more detail on why the results were so strong, and whether he's really planning to ratchet up Cisco's (CSCO) payroll by MORE

Cisco earnings: Great expectations

Here's the downside of being a rock star: People expect you to rock. So it is for Cisco (CSCO), the networking powerhouse that managed to cut $1 billion during the steepest part of the downturn and come out swinging.

It looks like the company will outpace analyst expectations for last quarter's revenue and profit when it reports earnings after the bell today. Trouble is, Wall Street already expects Cisco to do MORE

iPad's secret weapon: Marvel Comics?

Now that we've all seen the iPad and debated its design merits, let's cut to the chase: This thing will rise or fall on content. If Steve Jobs can get a bunch of cool books and apps on the thing, we'll want one. If not, we won't.

Where will His Steveness get some of those books? I say the same place he's gotten so many movies and TV shows for iTunes MORE

PC marketing chief Chahil to retire from HP

Satjiv Chahil, the marketing impresario who helped Hewlett-Packard seize the top spot in the global PC market, is retiring.

Chahil, the chief marketing officer of the Personal Systems Group, leaves HP (HPQ) at the top of its game. Since he joined the company four years ago, the company has taken share from rivals such as Dell (DELL) through a combination of operational efficiency and savvy messaging. For example, under Chahil's watch MORE

Debating the iPad: Sarah Lacy makes Jon Fortt look like a fanboy

How did that happen? Before the iPad announcement, folks got on my case for saying I didn't want a tablet. After the announcement? Well, I still don't want this version of the iPad, but I think this is one of the most impressive pieces of technology we've seen from Apple.

Sarah Lacy of Techcrunch isn't so sure. When I defended MORE