The next chief executive of Hewlett-Packard Co. will need to decide whether to stick with

Carly Fiorina's two-pronged strategy of trying to beat the company's rivals in what they do best -- IBM in premium computers and services, Dell in business and consumer systems. Or the Silicon Valley icon could effectively concede defeat in its current multi-front war and break itself apart into separate businesses that can focus their employees, management and research resources on specific markets.

After showing Fiorina the door this week, HP's board made its near-term intent clear: It wants to keep the strategy but change how it is executed. "The board is firmly committed to the business strategy that is in place," said Patricia Dunn, HP's new non-executive chairman. Chief Financial Officer Robert Wayman is serving as interim CEO until a successor is named.

Though HP is giving no hints as to a permanent successor, observers have mentioned Michael Capellas, the current MCI Inc. CEO and former Compaq chief who helped arrange 2002's HP- Compaq merger, and Ed Zander, the former Sun Microsystems Inc. president who now heads Motorola Inc.

It's possible, but less likely, the new CEO will be pulled from HP's ranks. Possibilities inelude Ann Livermore, who heads HP's enterprise business, and Vyomesh Joshi, the printer division chief who was recently named to head the combined imaging and PC businesses.

Regardless of who is named, the new leader must face hard facts about HP's growth and over- all performance since Fiorina embarked on reinventing HP in 1999, particularly fallout from the $19 billion Compaq merger and its unimpressive stock price over the last several years.

HP, No. 11 in the Fortune 500, now finds itself in the position of trying to sell low-profit, commodity products while at the same time trying to be a respected player in the high-end businesses.

It's not doing spectacularly well in either as its bottom line has been propped up by its printer and ink business. "What it boils down to is HP is trying to do a straddle, and ends up as the filling in the sandwich of two competitors," Frank Gillett, a principal analyst at Forrester Research, said Thursday.

The HP board considered breaking up the company on three occasions but rejected the idea each time, Fiorina said at an analyst meeting two months before her ouster.

We can sense throughout the passage that _________.

A．HP will go bankrupt soon

B．kip has never been better

C．Compaq merger is the biggest merger ever

D．HP's new CEO is undecided