Perennially beleaguered chip maker AMD announced Monday that Dirk Meyer is no longer the company’s CEO.  Until it finds a permanent replacement, Chief Financial Officer Thomas Seifert will serve as the firm’s acting CEO.  The abruptness of Meyer’s resignation has left a lot of room for speculation. AMD’s perfunctorily terse explanation hasn’t helped either. Meyer’s resignation was the result of a mutual agreement between the board and the former CEO was all that the company was willing to say.

"Dirk became CEO during difficult times. He successfully stabilized AMD while simultaneously concluding strategic initiatives including the launch of GlobalFoundries, the successful settlement of our litigation with Intel and delivering Fusion APUs to the market,” said AMD chairman Bruce Claflin about the former CEO’s accomplishments. 

"However, the Board believes we have the opportunity to create increased shareholder value over time. This will require the company to have significant growth, establish market leadership and generate superior financial returns. We believe a change in leadership at this time will accelerate the company's ability to accomplish these objectives."

Speculation is rife that Meyer’s failure to gauge the growing importance of the mobile market could have been a major reason for his ouster. Under Meyer, AMD adamantly refused to shed its inexplicable apathy towards increasingly important device segments like netbooks, smartphones and, most recently, tablets.