HP is said to be purchasing software company Autonomy for $10B while simultaneously dropping it’s line of hardware. This is similar to what IBM did when it sold off it’s PC line to China’s Lenovo. The question is, will this be all the company’s hardware? Just the PCs? What does this mean for their smartphone and tablet initiatives?

Moreover, this seems to confirm my assertion in the past that just Apple can make real money in the hardware business. And with Dell’s negative comments this week it seems we can expect software to become the real gem of the tech world going forward.