ROUND ROCK, Texas (TheStreet) --DELL(DELL_) CEO Michael Dell, an avid trash talker, lost no in time in slamming Hewlett Packard's(HPQ_) massive corporate restructuring, which was announced late Thursday. Dell's No. 1 rival will ditch its WebOS hardware and potentially spin-off its PC business, much to the apparent delight of the Dell chief.
If Hewlett Packardspins off their PC business ... maybe they will call it Compaq?" crowed the Dell supremo, via Twitter, referring to Hewlett Packard's tough $25 billion merger with PC maker Compaq. (Which, incidentally, was previously derided by Michael Dell as "the dumbest deal of the decade.
Dell CEO Michael Dell
Warming to his theme, the punchy Dell boss aimed another jab at his rival via Twitter late on Thursday. "Hewlett Packard ... They are calling it a separation, but it feels like a divorce," he wrote.
The sheer scale of Hewlett Packard's restructuring, which was announced with the company's third-quarter results, obviously took investors by surprise. Hewlett Packard CEO Leo Apotheker, who was criticized earlier this year for a lack of strategic clarity, is now wielding the ax, refocusing Hewlett Packard on high-margin areas such as enterprise software and services.
Highlighting this effort, Hewlett Packard also said it was buying U.K. software company Autonomy in a massive $11 billion deal.
The No. 1 PC maker, Hewlett Packard's current upheaval is clearly music to the ears of Dell, whose company holds the second-place slot in the computer market. With a major question mark now hanging over Hewlett Packard's PC business, investors should expect an increasingly aggressive stance from Dell as its attempts to claw share from its bigger competitor.
Like Hewlett Packard, Dell has also been wrestling with a tough demand environment. Earlier this week, Dell reported a second-quarter revenue miss and offered up weak outlook, noting weakness in consumer spending and the U.S. federal sector.
Michael Dell's belligerence has, on occasion, though, come back to haunt him. Dell fired a now-famous jab at Apple in the 1990s, when he said that the Mac-maker's problems then could be solved by closing the company and giving the money back to shareholders. Apple CEO Steve Jobs, however, had the last laugh in 2006 when Apple surpassed Dell's market cap.
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