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HP pulls its Köck out of Germany, slides him into European PCs

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Eric Cador - the boss of HP's PC and printer biz in Europe, the Middle East and Africa - is hanging up his boots after 28 years service. The senior veep will be replaced by fellow Hewlett-Packard exec Herbert Köck, insiders told The Channel.

Cador joined the US tech monster in 1985 as a product manager for the Personal Systems Group and held various roles in marketing, manufacturing and product development. He survived many dramatic changes at the company, such as the merger with Compaq, seeing off Dell and more recently the combining of the PC and printing units.

Confirmed the move on Twitter late last night, Cador simply tweeted: "I'm retiring from HP."

Sources close to HP say Herbert Köck, the veep of HP's Printing and Personal Systems (PPS) division in the Americas, is lined up to fill the gap left by Cador, who works alongside EMEA Enterprise Group head Peter Ryan: Cador and Ryan are joint managing directors for EMEA.

And we're told Köck will shift Frank Obermeier into the role chief operating officer of the printers and PCs group in EMEA. Obermeier currently runs that unit's operations in Germany.

It has been a tough 18 months for HP's PC business, thanks to Leo Apotheker's reign: while CEO he publicly mulled ejecting the personal systems business and missed the fondleslab boat as punters emptied their wallets to buy tablets and smartphones.

An analysis of "smart connected devices" - PCs, slabs and mobes - by market-watcher Canalys late last year showed that in Q3 HP was behind Samsung, Apple and Lenovo in the global sales battle.

HP is now shifting resources from PCs to tablets in hope of clawing back lost ground. The tech titan still leads the worldwide PC market - IDC reckons 382 million units will be sold in 2017 - but Lenovo is planing to seize the crown by 2014.

Update

HP sent us a statement confirming Eric's decision to call it a day.

"After 28 years of service to HP, PPS senior vice president Eric Cador has decided to retire. Herbert Köck, VP and general manager PPS Americas Printing Systems category, will lead our business in EMEA". ®

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