Some analysts, however, doubted that great cost efficiencies or much greater profit margins would be achieved, since there are not many opportunities to cut costs in such low-margin businesses and it would be difficult to meld enterprise and consumer sales functions. HP's share price sank in the days after the announcement. Some company watchers speculated that the move could be a step toward spinning off both the printing and PC businesses.

Though CEO Meg Whitman recently quashed the plan to sell or spin off the PC business that her predecessor, Leo Apotheker, announced last year, the merger of the personal computer and printer businesses would be a good initial step toward a bigger spinoff, said analyst Jack Gold in a research note.

"I would argue that if HP is moving down this path, it is the right move for them to make (and if they're not they should be)," Gold said. "The real growth opportunity for HP and its shareholders is in services, software, and higher margin hardware (e.g., servers, cloud-based systems, networking, storage)."

Meanwhile, Apple CEO Tim Cook finally answered investor and shareholder calls to distribute dividends. On Monday he declared the company of $98 billion to issue dividends and repurchase shares. Apple officials gave assurances that the company would have plenty of cash to spend to further develop its business and, among other things, Cook pointed to skyrocketing iPad sales as an indicator of its recent success, highlighting one of the more important hardware trends of the past year.

"We believe the tablet market will surpass the PC market in size. It's a matter of time," Cook said.