HP recently announced that they are exiting the PC business. HP is the number one manufacturer of computers that run Microsoft Windows, so that is a blow to Microsoft and good news for Apple.
Unfortunately it is also a blow to freedom, as MS Windows, and other operating systems like Linux, mean more freedom for computer users, while Apple and the Apple OS tend toward locked down systems, tyrranical control and loss of freedom.
Presumably the PC busines is for sale and will be scooped up by a Dell or Lenovo, or Samsung, which will restore a little balance to the universe. If that doesn't happen though, and if the HP business just goes away, then the balance of power is clearly shifting Apple's direction.
HP though had clearly lost its edge. They haven't been creative or innovative in years. Their laptops are bulky, plasticky, and uncreative, while their desktops were marginally powerful at best. They had clearly targeted the consumer market and were dis-inclined to build power machines at reasonable prices for the enthusiast market. While small, the enthusiast market drives innovation in PC design. A company that abandons the enthusiast market will quickly degenerate into a company that makes bland, boring, soviet-era gray box products; which is what the HP computer business was.
Aside from the 2007 HP Blackbird (which, at $5400 was WILDLY overpriced), HP hasn't made a good desktop PC since the Kayak XU series back in the late nineties, and it can be argued that they never made a good laptop.
So, goodbye HP. You lost your edge years ago. You should change your catch-word from "invent" to "fizzle". In the next few years, I expect to see the HP logo on cheap, Chinese made electronics at K-Mart; much like the once venerable GE logo is used now.