The Wall Street Journal reports HP may not carry out the PC part of Great Garage Sale after all, as post-Apotheker CEO Meg Whitman is currently busy "crunching the numbers of the proposal by her predecessor."
Whitman wants to make the decision regarding the HP PC division's fate by the end of October.
Apotheker wanted to turn HP into something like IBM, selling hardware and software to an enterprise client base. IBM sold off its PC business to Lenovo back in 2005.
The PC business totals $40 billion from a $126BN in HP 2010 sales, and $2BN from $8.8BN in net profit-- and "spin off costs might outweigh the benefits," the WSJ sources say.
A lot of analysts say HP lacks the resources to go IBM-style, while keeping a big PC business also keeps component prices down.
What will the future hold for HP, then? It might as well keep on going as it does now, only with tighter reigns on. No word yet on the future of the Palm webOS business, though.