We all know how HP went down in flames last week when they announced they were looking to spin off its PC products division, which sell all HP-branded PC products. Of course, rumors flew thick about who would acquire it and now the rumor that is sticking is that Samsung could be interested in acquiring HP's PC business. Included in this juicy rumor is that Samsung is reported to have contacted Quanta Computer, Compal Electronics and Pegatron Technology, major Taiwan-based OEMs of notebooks, to evaluate the possibility of outsourcing notebook orders.

Samsung have, until now, manufactured their notebooks through OEMs in mainland China and had previously tried to have some manufactured in Taiwan but lucked out. So for Samsung to contact those Taiwan-based manufacturers again, it's fuelling speculation that Samsung is looking to explode into the PC business in a rather large way. If Samsung were to take over HP's PC shipment volume, we're talking about 40 million PCs shipped per year - this is not a small number by any means.

Question: 5 years ago, would you have predicted this? That the juggernauts of the industry to fight like this would be Apple and Samsung? Wow.