Hewlett-Packard officials have moved quickly to stamp out rumors that the company was planning to sell its PC business.
In a terse two-paragraph statement issued March 10, Bill Wohl, HP’s senior vice president and chief communications officer, said the rumors were unfounded and illogical, and took aim at the source of the rumors.
"Irresponsible reporting by Taiwan’s Commercial Times, suggesting that HP might sell its PC business, should be dismissed as market rumor and speculation,” Wohl said in the statement. “HP runs the world’s largest PC business and it is core to HP’s strategy for the connected world."
The Chinese-language Commercial Times reported March 10 that HP executives were considering selling its PC business to Samsung Electronics. Digitimes picked up the story, noting that Commercial Times also said that HP officials also had had contact with Lenovo and Foxconn Electronics.
However, Digitimes reported that sources said the possibility of HP selling the business was low. Wohl’s statement backed that up.
Like rivals such as Dell and Acer, HP has seen its commercial PC business pick up in recent quarters, driven by corporate migration to Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system. However, the consumer side of the business has struggled, particularly in light of the rising popularity of tablet PCs. In the company’s fiscal first quarter, HP saw revenue in its commercial PC business grow 11 percent from the same period the year before, while consumer revenue fell 12 percent. Overall revenue for HP’s Personal Systems Group dropped 1 percent.
For more, read the eWEEK article: HP: We’re Not Selling PC Business.