Eckhard Pfeiffer

Eckhard Pfeiffer (born August 20, 1941 in Lauban, Germany [now Lubań, Poland]) is a business executive of German ancestry, and a former CEO of Compaq from 1991-1998. He joined Compaq from Texas Instruments, and established operations from scratch in both Europe and Asia. He was named as one of TIME's "Cyber Elite Top 50" for 1998. He received his MBA from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. His leadership in the early 1990s was successful.... more

Eckhard Pfeiffer (born August 20, 1941 in Lauban, Germany [now Lubań, Poland]) is a business executive of German ancestry, and a former CEO of Compaq from 1991-1998. He joined Compaq from Texas Instruments, and established operations from scratch in both Europe and Asia. He was named as one of TIME's "Cyber Elite Top 50" for 1998. He received his MBA from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. His leadership in the early 1990s was successful. At the same time as Compaq began to dominate the server market, they entered the retail computer market with the Presario which one of the first manufacturers in the mid-1990s to market a sub-$1000 PC. In order to maintain the prices it wanted, Compaq became the first first-tier computer manufacturer to utilize CPUs from AMD and Cyrix. The price war resulting from Compaq's actions ultimately drove numerous competitors, most notably IBM and Packard Bell, from this market. Under his tenure, Compaq made several major acquisitions. In 1997,... less