HP CEO - Should he stay or should he go?

If Hewlett-Packard actually ousts CEO Leo Apotheker barely a year into his tenure, it's impossible to the move-however drastic-was unexpected.

Bloomberg News reported today how the HP board will meet to think about this dramatic action inside the wake of widespread unhappiness over how Apotheker-and the board itself-has managed the computing giant over the past year.

Since he joined as CEO in September 2010, Apotheker has infuriated analysts by perhaps being too forthcoming concerning the company’s prospects. His predecessor Mark Hurd was known for managing the company expertly for Wall Street and then for stock price. (That they also gutted HP R&D and wounded morale inside company are less-noted facts about his tenure.)

But that's just the start. Apotheker’s plan to morph HP into an enterprise software and cloud company discounted the company’s heritage being a hardware manufacturer.

Then, things really went haywire in August when word leaked that HP might sell or spin off its $40-billion-a-year PC business-a leak that Apotheker confirmed for the third-quarter earnings call.

In those days, he also nuked the company’s highly-touted but light-selling TouchPad tablet business, simply a year or so after HP spent $1.2 billion to buy Palm Computing and several months following your TouchPads hit the shelves. Critics said if HP had priced the slick devices aggressively against Ipads, they'd did well, especially among business users who lamented iPad’s lack of Flash support.

His decision, announced as well, to pony up $10 billion for Autonomy PLC, a British search vendor, further inflamed former HP loyalists. Taken together, the PC, tablet and Autonomy news lopped $12.5 billion off HP’s market cap in a day.

“There would be a large amount of push back on Autonomy,” a source towards the HP board explained. “That was excess amount for weak hands.”

None with this helped Apotheker’s reputation in and out of HP, but Apotheker got into this mess late after the board fired Hurd for indiscretions and expense account abuse. Many HP watchers said the board, headed by VC giant Ray Lane, should come in for the share from the blame over the whole fiasco.

“Both Leo and also the board should be fired, no question,” one long-time HP partner with tight ties with other HP execs said. “This transition has become mishandled in the first place.”

HP couldn't be reached for touch upon the Bloomberg report, which further stated the board is looking to get a prospective interim replacement, possibly former eBay CEO Meg Whitman.

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