amelio

"There is no doubt in this economic situation that you will see consolidation of the PC industry, " William Amelio told a news conference.

Returning to the chief executive seat, he had only praise for Mr Amelio but made it clear he would run the company differently.

'If you think about going after the next billion computer users, this is a great way to do it, ' says Mr. Amelio.

But within months, the board fired Amelio after Apple suffered one of the biggest quarterly losses in Silicon Valley history.

Mr Liu refuses to be drawn on Mr Amelio's strategy but is critical of his management style.

Mr Amelio talks a lot about "effective execution" , something he says he came to understand while working with Larry Bossidy at Honeywell.

When his predecessor, Gilbert Amelio, stood down in July 1997, the shares were the equivalent of $3. 34 apiece in today's terms.

'You don't want everyone saying 'Yes, Yes, Yes' all the time, ' says Mr. Amelio, a brawny former college wrestler.

"[Mr Amelio] was focused on short-term performance; he cared about what investors say every three months" .

Mr Amelio did manage to stanch the losses inherited from IBM, thanks in part to the booming world economy.

The coach also inspired Mr Amelio to visit Japan, in the late 1980s, and then China, sparking a continuing interest in Asia.

Lenovo is losing ground to rivals and Yang is replacing Amelio as CEO.

The comments by Bill Amelio, chief executive, follow Lenovo's failure to buy Packard Bell, the European PC maker, last month.

Mr Amelio now lives in Singapore, partly because it is an easy base from which to travel in the region.

"We've learned how to have great customer intimacy in China, " says Mr Amelio.

Amelio knows his competition. A logistics and supply-chain expert, he worked not only at Dell but also with HP's CEO Mark Hurd at NCR.