Eckhard Pfeiffer (born August 20, 1941, in Lauban, Germany [now Lubań, Poland]) is a businessman of German ancestry, who served as president and CEO of Compaq from 1991 to 1999.
[4] Pfeiffer joined Texas Instruments as a financial controller in Munich after graduation, and later became head of the company's European marketing division.
[5][6] When Michael S. Swavely retired as president of Compaq's North American division on July 12, 1991, Pfeiffer was named to succeed him.
[11] In addition, it was believed that Canion's consensus-style management slowed the company's ability to react in the market, whereas Pfeiffer's autocratic style would be suited to price and product competition.
[6] Canion declined an offer to remain on Compaq's board[6] and was bitter about his ouster as he didn't speak to Rosen for years, although their relationship became cordial again.
Two weeks after Canion's ouster, five other senior executives resigned, including remaining company founder James C. Harris as SVP of engineering.
In order to maintain the prices it wanted, Compaq became the first first-tier computer manufacturer to utilize CPUs from AMD and Cyrix.
[15] Mark Anderson, president of Strategic News Service, a research firm based in Friday Harbor, Wash. was quoted as saying "The kind of goals he had sounded good to shareholders -- like being a $50 billion company by the year 2000, or to beat I.B.M.
On one hand, Compaq struggled to compete in the PC market with the Dell Computer Corporation, which sold directly to buyers, avoiding the dealer channel and its markup, and built each machine to order to keep inventories and costs at a minimum.
Pfeiffer also refused to develop a potential successor, rebuffing Rosen's suggestion to recruit a few executives to create the position of Compaq president.
[12] On April 17, 1999, just nine days after Compaq reported first-quarter profit being at half of what analysts had expected, the latest in a string of earnings disappointments, Pfeiffer was forced to resign as CEO in a coup led by board chairman Ben Rosen.
"[19] Rosen's priority was to have Compaq catchup as an E-commerce competitor, and he also moved to streamline operations and reduce the indecision that plagued the company.
His division had performed strongly as it had sales of $1.6 billion for the first quarter compared to $113 million in 1998, which met expectations and was anticipated to post accelerated and profitable growth going forward.
[24] Capellas was able to restore some of the luster lost in the latter part of the Pfeiffer era and he repaired the relationship with Microsoft which had deteriorated under his predecessor's tenure, but the company still struggled against lower-cost competitors such as Dell who took over the top spot of PC manufacturer from Compaq in 2001.