Compaq Computer Corporation was a company founded in 1982, that developed, sold and supported computers and related products and services.

Struggling in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble bust, Compaq was acquired for US $ 25 billion by HP in 2002.

Compaq was founded in February 1982 by Rod Canion, Jim Harris and Bill Murto, three senior managers from semiconductor manufacturer Texas Instruments.

The first Compaq PC was sketched out on a table napkin by Ted Papajohn while dining with the founders in a Houston restaurant.

The Compaq Portable was one of the progenitors of today's laptop ; some called it a " suitcase computer " for its size and the look of its case.

The Compaq Portable was the first in the range of the Compaq Portable series.

The only part which had to be duplicated was the BIOS, which Compaq did legally by using clean room reverse engineering at a cost of $ 1 million.

It was considerably faster than an IBM PC and was, like the Compaq Portable, also capable of running IBM software.

It was Compaq's first non-portable computer and began the Compaq Deskpro line of computers.

When Compaq introduced the first PC based on Intel's new 80386 microprocessor, the Compaq Deskpro 386, in 1986, it marked the first CPU change to the PC platform that was not initiated by IBM.

An IBM-made 386 machine eventually reached the market seven months later, but by that time Compaq was the 386 supplier of choice and IBM had lost its image of technical leadership.

Support for the virtual 8086 mode was added by Compaq engineers.

Pfeiffer was given $ 20, 000 USD to start up Compaq Europe.

By 1990, Compaq Europe was a $ 2 billion business, and foreign sales contributed 54 percent of Compaq's revenues.

Pfeiffer's vision was to move Compaq beyond its main business of manufacturing retail PCs and into the more lucrative business services and solutions that IBM did well at.

In January 1998, Compaq was at its height.

By summer 1998, Compaq was suffering from product-quality problems.

Compaq was hit with two class-action lawsuits, as a result of several executives selling $ 50 million USD of stock before a conference call with analysts, where they noted that demand for PCs was slowing down.

On April 17, 1999, just nine days after Compaq reported first-quarter profit being at half of what analysts had expected, the latest in a string of earnings disappointments, Pfeiffer was forced to resign as CEO in a coup led by board chairman Ben Rosen.

" Rosen's priority was to have Compaq catchup as an E-commerce competitor, and he also moved to streamline operations and reduce the indecision that plagued the company.

Capellas was able to restore some of the luster lost in the latter part of the Pfeiffer era and he repaired the relationship with Microsoft which had deteriorated under his predecessor's tenure, but the company still struggled against lower-cost competitors such as Dell who took over the top spot of PC manufacturer from Compaq in 2001.

While AMD had been able to sell some of its 486s to large OEMs, notably Acer and Compaq, Cyrix had not.

CEMM, for Compaq Expanded Memory Manager was the first so-called PC " memory manager " for Intel 80386 CPUs, able to transform " XMS " extended memory into " EMS " expanded memory by using the virtual memory features and the virtual 8086 mode of the CPU.

Intel, Compaq and Microsoft were able to rally the support of all of the US RBOCs and five of the largest international carriers ( NTT, British Telecom, France Telecom, Deutch Telecom, and Singapore Telecom ), collectively representing the Promoters, to drive the major communications equipment manufacturers ( the Supporters ) to demonstrate interoperability of products based on the G. Lite specification at SUPERCOMM in June of 1999.

In 2002, Be Inc. sued Microsoft claiming that Hitachi had been dissuaded from selling PCs loaded with BeOS, and that Compaq had been pressured not to market an Internet appliance in partnership with Be.

Rosen and Canion had disagreed about how to counter the cheaper Asian PC imports, as Canion wanted Compaq to build lower cost PCs in-house, while Rosen believed that Compaq needed to buy standard components from suppliers and reach the market faster.

Under Pfeiffer's tenure as chief executive, Compaq entered the retail computer market with the Presario which one of the first manufacturers in the mid-1990s to market a sub -$ 1000 PC.

The two price wars resulting from Compaq's actions ultimately drove numerous competitors from the market, such as Packard Bell, and by 1994 Compaq had overtaken Apple Computer and even surpassed I. B. M.

This acquisition instantly gave Compaq a presence in the higher end business computing market.

On one hand, Compaq struggled to compete in the PC market with the Dell Computer Corporation, which sold directly to buyers, avoiding the dealer channel and its markup, and built each machine to order to keep inventories and costs at a minimum.

Most Compaq products have been re-branded with the HP nameplate, such as the company's market leading ProLiant server line, while the Compaq brand remains on only some consumer-oriented and budget products, notably Compaq Presario PCs.

At the time, Compaq was focused on the enterprise market and had recently purchased several other large vendors.

Because of this, when the first 386-based system ( the Compaq Deskpro 386 ) hit the market in 1986, it still supported 16-bit slots.

The first EISA computers to hit the market were the Compaq Deskpro 486 and the SystemPro.

* Compaq beating IBM to market during 1986 with Compaq Deskpro 386, the first 80386-based PC.

In the first quarter of 2001, Dell Inc. reached a world market share of 12. 8 percent, passing Compaq to become the world's largest PC maker.

With 70 % of the mainframe market, it had larger revenues than Apple, Compaq, DEC, HP, and TI combined.

In the mid-1990s, Packard Bell lost market share as Compaq started to undercut its prices.

The US operations in particular were at loss due in particular to price war in this market dominated by Compaq, IBM, and HP.

C & T eventually ended up competing in the low end of the video market, the 65555 featured an LVDS transmitter and notably won a design in early Compaq Armada laptops.

The Project started in May 1998, a month before the Digital Equipment Corporation merger into Compaq was completed, and a final product was brought to market in November 1999.

AST managed to gain a decent market share of the PC market, however, it never came close to overtaking Compaq and Dell.