Comment by bee_rider
I agree.
OEMs have always been weird because in some sense consumers attribute the computers to them. But they don’t have a core competency in software. And they don’t have a core competency in the hardest parts of hardware—chip design, etc.
Picking the right parts to buy, assembling them, shipping them, that’s all important stuff. They weren’t in a position to win against Apple; they were playing one of the three games Apple plays, almost as well as Apple.
HP did have competency in a lot of those areas though. They were a large company that did have fingers in a lot of different things, both software and hardware. Their PCs were visible, but they had lots of other divisions doing lots of things.