So let me get this straight: the number one PC maker in the world is bowing out of that race amid declining sales.

The number two PC maker in the world just posted a net loss in the quarter — which, by the way, is their first loss ever.

But the PC business is totally peachy keen, right, Microsoft?

In the rush to analyze what HP just did, everyone is throwing around a ton of ideas for what happens next. Of those, Nicholas Carlson’s is the best so far.

Dan Frommer calls this “not a crazy idea”. I’d go farther. It’s a good one given Facebook’s vision. They clearly believe in HTML5 and are working towards that future, but at the same time, they need their own mobile OS solution. WebOS would give them the best of both worlds.

Facebook has tried to fork Android to make their own flavor, but whispers suggest that hasn’t worked as well as was hoped. WebOS could be fully their’s — for a price.

The idea of Amazon buying webOS makes some sense too, but they’re likely already too far down the path of building their own Android fork. We should hear more about that soon.

Google is another wild card. They already have Android and Chrome OS, so why buy a third OS? Well, if the Palm patents were included, that would be one reason. But more generally, webOS is also in-line with their vision of a web-based future. Certainly part of it could help Chrome OS and/or Android. 

But a certain $12.5 billion deal that just went down may preclude a webOS deal.

One final thought: HP bought Palm for $1.2 billion. Given the current market, Palm’s patent portfolio alone is likely worth much more than that. HP’s move could go from dumbfounding to genius if they spin those patents off for several times what they paid for all of Palm. 

Update: As thatwhichis thatwhichis points out below, former Palm CEO and current HP exec Jon Rubinstein is on Amazon’s board…

Update 2: Yeah, this puppy is getting sold.

Holy shit.

It was crazy enough when talk began leaking out this morning that HP was spinning off their PC business — they’re the biggest PC maker in the world.

Now they’re winding down (read: killing off) webOS and killing off the Pre and the just-released TouchPad?

Yes, they have their large enterprise business. And now they have Autonomy. So essentially, HP is going to try to do the same move IBM did in the 1990s. It worked for IBM, will it work for HP?

More importantly, did HP really need to do this? Seems a little premature to me. Yes, the TouchPad was a flop. But we’re in the very early days of the mobile/tablet space. And again, HP rules (ruled) the PC business.

With the webOS buy, HP had an opportunity to control an entire ecosystem — hardware and software working seamlessly together. They could have been a true foil to Apple. Instead, they’re giving up and becoming an enterprise company. 

Wow.

Now that Apple has far surpassed Microsoft in every financial category (market cap, revenue, profit), what do we watch for? I think one interesting thing will be when Apple passes HP in revenue.

While Apple’s market cap is roughly five times that of HP, the world’s largest PC-maker still pulls in more revenue. How much more? About $25 billion, over the last four quarters. But Apple’s revenues are growing so fast that this could fall in the next year. 

Of course, while Apple is behind in revenue, they’re far ahead in profit. Even though HP pulls in $125 billion a year in revenue, they’re only doing about $11 billion in profit. Apple has done over $23 billion in profit in the past year.

Meanwhile, I have to run the numbers again, but I think Apple is now making more yearly revenue than another old-school powerhouse: IBM.

Update: Apple still slightly behind IBM over the last four quarters in terms of revenue: $104.6 billion to $100.32 billion. That will change next quarter, I imagine. 

Well, that’s one way to kill your fledgling tablet. Hint that you’ll soon be backing a competitor as well. Brilliant. 

HP is really starting to worry me. Somewhere Mark Hurd is smiling. “Somewhere” being in Oracle’s boardroom. 

But only in a limited way, Jon Rubinstein tells This is my next.

This is interesting in that it would be a step away from what has been a “let’s be more like Apple” strategy. Well, unless you count 1990s Apple.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad move. It’s just different.

Apple doesn’t license out for a number of reasons. But one big one I imagine is the simple fear that it would cheapen the brand — even if they got the best partners in the world. Or at the very least, the fear that it could in some way cheapen the brand. Or hamper the ecosystem. When you’re not in total control, well, you’re not in total control.

But HP has a problem right now in that webOS is far behind iOS, Android, and perhaps even WP7 in terms of reach. The fastest way to build that up would be through licensing to OEM partners. 

But if that’s the main reason, that is absolutely a mistake. 

Hopefully HP just feels like webOS would benefit from outside help and they’d love to see others’ takes on what they could do with it. But that’s a bit idealistic. It almost always comes down to a business decision on some level.

And for that reason alone, I dont’ have a good feeling about this.