UPDATE 2-Market ponders SAP's direction after CEO leaves

* Apotheker exits after 7 months, unsettling investors

* Customer dissatisfaction seen as catalyst for exit

* Shares fall 2.5 pct in firmer German market

(Adds chairman comment, updates share price)

By Nicola Leske

FRANKFURT, Feb 8 (Reuters) - The abrupt departure of SAP AG's (SAPG.DE) chief executive caught the market off guard and has investors wondering what his two replacements have in store for the world's largest business-software company.

SAP announced Leo Apotheker's exit late on Sunday, immediately replacing him with the team of Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe, who will have the task of setting out a clear direction for the comapny.

"We are a public company and profit is everything but in order to be profitable, it needs to be a happy company again," SAP co-founder and Chairman Hasso Plattner said on a conference call on Monday.

Plattner said customers had lost trust in the company and that he himself had agreed to the controversial decision to raise maintenance fees for the first time in a decade.

The software maker tried to introduce an across the board increase in prices in 2009 after 10 years of keeping them steady but had to back down after a large number of customers complained the mark ups were not justified.

"It (the price increase proposal) is not something that we can put in Leo's shoes, we made a mistake, we have to change course, I think we did this and now we have to regain the trust from the customer," Plattner said.

But he added: "Unfortunately, the head of the company takes a lot of the blame whether it is justified or not."

SAP shares stock ended the session down 2.5 pct, while the DAX index .GDAXI was up 0.93 pct and the DJ Stoxx tech index .SX8P was down 0.51 percent.

"This step comes as an absolute surprise," DZ Bank analyst Oliver Finger told clients in a research note. "(It) should increase short-term uncertainty about SAP's future strategy."

Apotheker, a multilingual salesman who lives in Paris, was initially named co-chief executive with Henning Kagermann in April 2008 but he continued on his own after Kagermann retired last July.

He was the first executive unable to write software code to be elevated to such a high office at SAP.

The company said it was returning to its tradition of a split leadership with McDermott, head of the field organisation, and Jim Hagemann Snabe, product development chief, both members of the SAP executive board, taking the helm.

Plattner said SAP had its best years with a co-CEO structure and emphasized the new leadership team would not be a short-term solution, dispelling speculation that one of the two men would eventually become sole chief executive.

McDermott, who is based at SAP's U.S. headquarters in southeastern Pennsylvania, played a leading role in sharply raising SAP's share price of the key North American market.

Snabe, a Dane, is a trained mathematician in charge of rolling out SAP's Business ByDesign software suite, which has has been delayed by several problems.

For a Factbox on the two co-CEOs click on [ID:nLDE6170GM] For a Buy or Sell on SAP click on [ID:LDE6170LE]

For a related story on Plattner's role at SAP, click on [ID:nLDE6170Z7]

SLOWER DECISIONS?

Analysts at UBS interpreted the management reshuffle as a sign Plattner was dissatisfied with 2009's weak licence performance as well as the customer disquiet over the attempted price hikes.

Software licensing and maintenance fees account for the bulk of revenues at SAP, whose main competitors include Oracle (ORCL.O) and IBM (IBM.N).

Some analysts said the company lacked a clear, cohesive strategy under Apotheker.

"SAP's strategy is currently not visible for staff or clients," said German IT consulting firm Experton Group.

"SAP is solid and successful in its basic business but innovations regularly fail, communication internally as well as externally is a catastrophe and that explains an extreme uncertainty on all levels."

Analysts were divided on whether the leadership team would be successful.

"We are concerned that the co-leadership might slow down the decision-taking process," Merck Finck analyst Theo Kitz said.

Yvonne Genovese, head of software analysis at Gartner, said both McDermott and Snabe had shown they were very capable, though "one worry is that the two new co-CEOs have never led ... We will see how they work together." Danish Jyske Bank was more positive, saying that the co-CEOs were well known to customers and investors.

"The net effect of the change of management should be a more visionary and clear communication towards the outside world," said Jyske Bank, which kept its SAP recommendation at "buy".

"Leo Apotheker has had from time to time a tendency to appear arrogant ... which has made it more difficult to get his message across," Jyske Bank said.

(Additional reporting by Christoph Steitz in Frankfurt; James Mackenzie in Paris and Peter Starck in Copenhagen; editing by John Stonestreet)