Compaq

Compaq Computer Corporation was an American informationtechnology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced some of the first IBM PC compatible computers, being the second company after Columbia Data Products to legally reverse engineer the BIOS of the IBM Personal Computer. It rose to become the largest supplier of PC systems during the 1990s. The company was initially based in Harris County, Texas.

The company was formed by Rod Canion, Jim Harris, and Bill Murto, all of whom were former Texas Instruments senior managers. All three had left Compaq in 1991 due to an internal shakeup, and saw Eckhard Pfeiffer appointed as president and CEO, who served throughout the 1990s. Ben Rosen provided the venture capital financing for the fledgling company and served as chairman of the board for 17 years from 1983 until September 28, 2000, when he retired and was succeeded by Michael Capellas, who served as its last chairman and CEO until its merger.

Compaq was overtaken by Dell as the top global PC maker two times; one in 1999 and the other in 2001. Struggling to keep up against its competitors with the price wars against Dell, the launch of a joint venture with ADI Corporation in 1994, and a risky acquisition of DEC in 1998 (which includes the inheritance of the DEC Alpha family of CPUs), Compaq was acquired by Hewlett-Packard (HP) for US$25 billion in 2002. Despite using the Compaq name in HP's own HP Compaq brand of business computers, which served as a replacement for the Compaq Evo in 2003 as well as the HP ProBook brand in 2009, the Compaq brand as a whole remained in use by HP for lower-end systems until 2013 when it was discontinued. In 2015, HP itself was split up into two companies, leading to its legal successors HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

As of 2025, the Compaq brand is currently licensed to third parties outside of North America for use on electronics in Latin America (e.g., Mexico and Brazil) and India.