IBM, Dell seen as big winners in HP mega-merger

PC World: “Industry analysts seem to agree that Hewlett-Packard’s planned acquisition of Compaq Computer is good for
just about every big IT hardware and services company around–except HP and Compaq, that is.

Their reasoning goes like this: If the deal wins approval, HP/Compaq will drag itself through the quagmire of a
months-long reorganization, laying off thousands and discontinuing one product line after another. During this
chaos, the thinking goes, customers would lose their service and support connections and would flee to
another vendor.

The choice alternatives, many analysts predict, are IBM, mainly for services, and Dell Computer, mainly for
hardware, especially PCs and servers.”