Former CEO Leo Apotheker’s plan to spin-off the personal computer unit of computing giant Hewlett Packard may be abandoned due to its projected costs outweighing any potential benefits to be derived from the sale. HP is reportedly under pressure from its friends in manufacturing to keep the personal computing division within the company which is the world’s largest with revenues of $40.1 billion. This current tone differs markedly from that of the end of August when HP was quite eager to spin-off the pc unit because it was a high revenue but low margin segment of the industry. This is quite the year for the PC maker which has simultaneously killed the TouchPad platform only to watch it sell it like hot cakes while also watching its shares plummet upon the announcement of its PC division spin-off. The news that HP was dropping its PC business came as a greater shock than that of, what is essentially, the end of Palm with HP exploring its options with regard to WebOS. Concerns that the TouchPad’s fire sale cheapened the tablet market have been augmented by the recent announcements by Amazon of the Kindle Fire which not only upped the ante for competing touch screen tablets but also established a price bar for Android tablets in general.

[CNET]