eBay CEO Meg Whitman to step down

Updated at 3:20 p.m. PST with more background, analyst comment.
Meg Whitman is stepping down as chief executive of eBay after a decade, allowing a trusted insider to respond to slowed growth at the online auction pioneer.
Whitman has long said that every CEO should step down after 10 years to seek new professional challenges and make room for fresh leadership. Following her own edict, she will step down March 31 while remaining on the board.
"It's time for eBay, and this community, to have a new leadership team, a new perspective, and a new vision," she wrote on the company blog. A report that she would step down appeared Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal.
Replacing her is John Donahoe, head of eBay Marketplaces, whom Whitman recruited in 2005. Donahoe is well-respected by investors and board members, analysts said.
Whitman joined eBay in March 1998 and successfully navigated it through the dot-com boom and bust and on to near cult-like popularity with what was known as the "eBay economy." Through eBay, anyone with an Internet connection could find obscure collectibles or turn their dusty garage treasures into cash.
Now, the company faces growing competition from Amazon.com along with what one analyst calls "buyer fatigue" following years of revenue leaps.
"Whitman wasn't as innovative as her counterparts at Amazon and elsewhere...They definitely need a bit of a change of direction," said Aaron Kessler, an analyst at Piper Jaffray. "The biggest challenge is buyer activity. There's been buyer fatigue in the last year or so, with fewer people coming to the site and coming less often."
Sales are still growing, just not at the pace they once were. The company reported Wednesday that fourth-quarter profits rose 53 percent from a year earlier to $531 million, and revenue increased 27 percent to $2.18 billion.
However, the stock dropped about 6 percent in after-hours trading to $27.15 after eBay warned that revenue in the current quarter and for the full year would be below analyst estimates.
While auctions represent the majority of eBay's revenue, growth was led by other units, including PayPal, online ticketing site StubHub, Internet phone company Skype, classifieds, and advertising.
In an attempt to reverse the slowed growth, eBay has redesigned its auction site and cut some fees for listing items. Executives have hinted at further, more drastic changes to the company's listing and selling fees.
eBay took a write-down last year for its purchase of Skype, forcing it and others to reassess the value of the start-up.
Despite the concerns, the impact of Whitman's tenure should not to be overlooked, said Scott Devitt, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co.
"Meg Whitman was a phenomenal success running eBay for a decade," Devitt said. "She has overseen an 88-times increase in revenue and a more than 1300 percent return in stock since the IPO...What's happened is purely maturity and not necessarily bad business."CNET News.com's Dawn Kawamoto contributed to this story.

Virgin unveils spaceship designs

Virgin Galactic has released the final design of the launch system that will take fare-paying passengers into space.
It is based on the X-Prize-winning SpaceShipOne concept - a rocket ship that is lifted initially by a carrier plane before blasting skywards.
The Virgin system is essentially a refinement, but has been increased in size to take eight people at a time on a sub-orbital trip, starting in 2010.
Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson said the space business had huge potential.
"I think it's very important that we make a genuine commercial success of this project," he told a news conference in New York.
"If we do, I believe we'll unlock a wall of private sector money into both space launch systems and space technology.
"This could rival the scale of investment in the mobile phone and internet technologies after they were unlocked from their military origins and thrown open to the private sector."
The 'experience'
Virgin Galactic has contracted the innovative aerospace designer Burt Rutan to build its spaceliners. The carrier - White Knight Two (WK2) - is said to be very nearly complete and is expected to begin flight-testing later this year.

SpaceShipTwo under construction in CaliforniaSpaceShipTwo (SS2) is about 60% complete, Virgin Galactic says.
Both vehicles are being constructed at Mr Rutan's Scaled Composites factory in California.
The rocket spaceliner will carry two pilot astronauts and six ticketed passengers. They will fly initially from a new facility called Spaceport America in the New Mexico desert.
The journeys will last about two-and-a-half hours from beginning to end.

Eight individuals will be aboard each flight
Enlarge ImagePassengers on SS2 will climb to an altitude of 110km, from where they will get to experience weightless for a few minutes, and see the curvature of the Earth and the black of space.
Seats cost $200,000. Virgin Galactic says more than 200 individuals have booked, and another 85,000 have registered an interest to fly.
Tens of millions of dollars in deposits have already been taken, the company adds.
Satellite potential
Sir Richard said the launch system would also be made available to industrial and research groups.
"The fact that this system will have the capability to launch small payloads and satellites at low cost is hugely important," he told the launch event at the American Museum of Natural History.
"As far as science is concerned, this system offers tremendous potential to researchers who will be able to fly experiments much more often than before, helping to answer key questions about Earth's climate and the mysteries of the Universe."

Others, such as EADS Astrium, have competing conceptsThe designs released on Wednesday are a clear evolution of the concept that won the $10m Ansari X-Prize in 2005 for the first successful, privately developed, sub-orbital human launch-system.
The most obvious difference is the scale. At 18.3m (60ft) in length, SS2 is twice as big as its predecessor.
Virgin Galactic said in a statement: "It incorporates both the lessons learned from the SpaceShipOne programme and the market research conducted by Virgin Galactic into the requirements future astronauts have for their space flight experience.
"It also has built-in flexibility to encompass future requirements for other scientific and commercial applications."
A SS2 simulator is now available to train the pilots.
WK2 is 23.7m-long (78ft). Its wingspan is unchanged at 42.7m (140ft), but it will now sport four Pratt and Whitney PW308 engines.
Virgin Galactic is one of several companies hoping shortly to offer space trips.
Amazon.com entrepreneur Jeff Bezos has his own scheme, as does the Paypal founder, Elon Musk. Even Europe's EADS Astrium, the company that coordinates the manufacture of the Ariane 5 rocket, is developing a commercial suborbital ship.
Currently, the only way to buy a trip into space is to pay for a seat on the Russian Soyuz launcher. Tickets purchased through Space Adventures cost a reported $20m and take the recipient to the International Space Station for a short holiday.