For now, Dell and HP seem committed to keeping their PC divisions.

The current troubles are still being blamed on strong "headwinds" ranging from continuing trouble in the global economy to the Apple's ongoing tablet dominance.

But we'll see what the next quarter brings and what Wall Street has to say about it.

And if HP loses its top position, an even larger conversation may begin in America.

Patrick Thibodeau covers SaaS and enterprise applications, outsourcing, government IT policies, data centers and IT workforce issues for Computerworld. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @DCgov, or subscribe to . His e-mail address is pthibodeau@computerworld.com.