Meg Whitman will have hard time turning around HP

There's not been a company ever turned around by the fifth CEO on the job, Chambers said in a wide-ranging interview with Reuters, referring to HP's management history.

Whitman replaced the harshly criticized Leo Apotheker at the helm of HP almost exactly one year ago in a bid to restore investor confidence in the iconic Silicon Valley company.

Chambers said there was potential for HP, the world's No. 1 personal computer maker, to grow in market transitions to cloud computing and the move from PCs to tablets, but the company may not be able to catch up. Cisco and HP compete in a number of areas such as networking equipment.

Its a tough hand to play, but clearly as a competitor I like competing against that hand, and we are going to try and accelerate while they are struggling, Chambers said.

HP has continued to struggle since Whitman took the helm, posting an $8.9 billion loss for its fiscal third quarter ended July 31. Its shares on Tuesday hit a more than one-year low of $16.70, before nudging up a penny to close at $16.71.

Chambers softened his comments by saying that he is a huge Whitman supporter, pointing to his backing of her unsuccessful run for governor of California in 2010. He said he believes she took the chief executive job at Hewlett Packard in part

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