14 DAY TRIAL // The idea of HP selling its PC manufacturing business to anyone else seems a bit preposterous at first (it would be like Apple selling iTunes, just to give an example), but rumors circulating on the Taiwan market seem to indicate that HP might be actually considering such a move.
So, according to several sources from the Taiwan-based media (such as Digitimes and Chiphell, who's quoting the “Taiwan Business Times”), it would seem that HP's plans were pretty well set up ever since Q4, 2010, with the likely buyer of this true behemoth being none other than Korean giant Samsung.
However, it seems that, for some reason or another, the deal never went through, at least not yet, but that's not stopping it from simply “looming over”, as none of the two companies officially dismissed it.
Of course, there are several reasons why this whole thing might be just pure speculation, probably the most important being that HP would not really give up on its biggest money maker that easily (yes, they'll be focusing on WebOS on the future, but that doesn't meant they're likely to give up their main cash cow that easily).
However, selling the entire PC manufacturing business to Samsung, while very beneficial for the Korean company (who would thus complete its already huge product portfolio) would really affect the Taiwan industry, since, after all, all of HP's manufacturing partners are located there (much in the same way as most other PC “builders” out there, HP doesn't have any hardware manufacturing capabilities, whereas Samsung relies heavily on internal production).
So, as a conclusion, although multiple sources tend to confirm that there have been some serious talks between HP and Samsung (as well as some other major players, such as Lenovo and Foxconn, reportedly), we strongly advise you to take this whole thing with a serious pinch of salt, unless these major players decided to provide us with some unexpected surprise, that is.