Hewlett-Packard announced the firing of three top executives after reporting a dismal quarter and acknowledging that the company's failure to execute on its own internal computing initiatives left it vulnerable to competitors

Hewlett-Packard announced the firing of three top executives after reporting a dismal quarter and acknowledging that the company's failure to execute on its own internal computing initiatives left it vulnerable to competitors. HP, which released earnings a week before they were expected, fell far short of targets and lowered its profit outlook going forward. HP earned US$586 million, or 24 cents a share, in its fiscal third quarter, 7 cents below targets. HP did manage to grow revenue year over year to $18.9 billion, in part on the strength of growing consumer PC sales. HP shares tumbled some 13 percent Thursday and were losing ground again Friday morning, down 1 percent to $16.73 by midday. By contrast, Dell reported a strong second quarter, with revenues setting a company record and profit up 29 percent, and maintained its outlook going forward. In the aftermath of HP's results, CEO Carly Fiorina announced that three executives, including those responsible for sales of servers and storage system as well as a push to migrate HP to new systems designed to make it more efficient, were being fired. An internal effort to install a new supply-chain management and order-processing system took twice as long as expected and resulted in the company having to slash prices to move some equipment off the shelves.