HP's Personal Systems CTO to retire

IDG News Service - Phil McKinney, vice president and chief technology officer of Hewlett-Packard's Personal Systems Group, will retire from the company at the end of this year, he wrote in a blog post on Monday.

In his blog entry, McKinney wrote that his would not be a typical retirement. He will start by focusing on the launch of a book, Beyond the Obvious, and will continue to "help innovators get better at innovating."

"My definition of retirement is the freedom to write, speak, mentor, advise and teach without the restrictions of the traditional employee/corporate structure," he wrote.

McKinney started at HP nine years ago as an advisor on innovation. He previously worked at CSC and Teligent and is a contributing columnist at Forbes.

McKinney's departure will follow that of Shane Robison, HP's chief strategy and technology officer, who plans to retire on Tuesday, and will not be replaced. The company has gone through a period of upheaval in the past year after firing CEO Mark Hurd, replacing him with Leo Apotheker, who cancelled the company's WebOS mobile products and said it was studying a spinoff or sale of the Personal Systems Group, and then firing Apotheker in favor of board member and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman.

Just last week, HP announced it would hold on to PSG, which is responsible for the company's PCs and mobile devices. However, HP has not reversed its decision to discontinue products based on WebOS, which it acquired from Palm.

Stephen Lawson covers mobile, storage and networking technologies for The IDG News Service. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @sdlawsonmedia. Stephen's e-mail address is stephen_lawson@idg.com