Samsung on Wednesday poured cold water on speculation that it might be looking at acquiring Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ)'s PC business.
"The recent rumors that Samsung Electronics will be taking over Hewlett-Packard Co.'s personal computer business are not true," Samsung Electronics said on its official global blog. "We hope this clarifies any confusion that may have occurred."
The rumor mill kicked into high gear on Tuesday after Digitimes reported that Samsung has recently met with several Taiwan-based notebook PC makers as a possible prelude to an acquisition of HP's PSG business.
HP last week stunned channel partners and investors by ditching the TouchPad tablet and announcing that it's considering a spin-off or sale of PSG.
Since then, HP channel executives have been getting in front of partners and assuring them that HP isn't planning on dumping its PC business and that it remains committed to its PSG roadmap.
HP plans to complete its deliberation within 8 to 12 weeks, after which time it'll be ready to offer a more definitive path for the future of PSG -- which could include no change at all.
"We'll be looking at all of the various dis-synergies, supply chain mitigation issues. And once we'll be done with that work, we'll report back to the board and a decision will or will not be made," HP CEO Leo Apotheker said last week in the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company's third quarter earnings call.
Meanwhile, HP executives have been vigorously working to counteract what they claim is a concerted effort from PC industry foes to convince HP's PSG partners to jump ship.
"I’m sure that our friends at not only Dell (NSDQ:Dell) but people like EMC (NYSE:EMC) and Cisco (NSDQ:CSCO) and probably Lexmark are using this opportunity to try to crack the strength of our ecosystem, the strength of our partner relationships," Todd Bradley, executive vice president of PSG, told partners in a Tuesday conference call.
Dell Chairman and CEO Michael Dell took a jab at HP on Twitter in the wake of the company's PSG announcement. "Goodbye HP. Sorry you don't want to be in PCs anymore. But we do more than ever," Dell Dell tweeted last Thursday.
Although HP isn't making any more TouchPads, the company still believes there's a future for WebOS. "The WebOS is not dead,” WebOS business unit chief Stephen DeWitt said Friday, as reported by Bloomberg. "We’re going to continue to evolve it, update and support it. We stand by it."
Samsung, which has reportedly held discussions with HP about licensing WebOS, didn't mention WebOS in its Wednesday blog post.