Hewlett-Packard

Hewlett-Packard (sometimes known corporately as The Hewlett-Packard Company or HP for short) was founded on New Year's Day in 1939 by William "Bill" Hewlett and David "Dave" Packard. In 1940, they started off as an audio oscillator until 1975 when they started inventing computers. In 2002, the company acquired Compaq for $25 billion. With the acquisition of Compaq, their headquarters in Palo Alto, California was made into the HP Campus and was also a site for the HP Labs. The buyout also included the Compaq brands; namely Presario, Evo, iPaq and ProLiant. In August 2006, rapper Jay-Z became the first hip-hop artist to sign a $1 million endorsement deal with the company to help endorse their Pavilion line of laptops. In 2009, HP completed another acquisition of a PDA brand called Palm. However, that found little success as did with Compaq. At the time, HP was the top-investing computer giant, defeating its business rival, Dell. Between August and October 2011, boxing legend Manny Pacquiao signed an endorsement deal with the company. Also, HP quietly shuttered the Palm brand. In 2013, HP discontinued all production for Compaq brands in North America. Then, they released the Sprout, in partnership with Intel's RealSense technology. On November 1, 2015, Hewlett-Packard corporately separated. At the center of the company's split was the end of Compaq. The two new companies are now known as: HP, Inc. (for consumer, personal and home products) and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (for business products). Also, the HP Labs were split into two campuses to coincide with the HP split (the new HP Labs and Hewlett Packard (HPE) Labs). However, the Hewlett-Packard name still remains active, as of today. The brands under Hewlett-Packard include: AlphaServer, BlackBird, BladeSystem, Brio, DeskJet, DeskPro, Elite, ENVY, Evo, InkJet, Integrity, iPaq, Jornanda, LaserJet, LX, NetServer, OfficeJet, OMEN, Pavilion, Presario, ProBook, ProLiant, Prosignia, ScanJet, Slate, Spectre, Sprocket, Sprout, StorageWorks, Superdome, TouchPad, TouchSmart, Vectra and Veer.