Since Hewlett-Packard announced that it was exploring options to sell, spin off or overhaul its giant PC and consumer hardware division to focus the company on cloud and business solutions, observers have been speculating about its possible futures. Samsung just foreclosed on one of them.

“To put to rest any speculation on this issue, I would like to definitively state that Samsung Electronics will not acquire Hewlett-Packard’s PC Business,” Samsung CEO Geosing Choi wrote in a note sent to Wired.com:

Hewlett-Packard is the global leader in the PC business with sales of 40 million units last year, while Samsung is an emerging player in the category and sold about 10 million units in 2010. Based on the significant disparity in scale with Samsung’s own PC business and the complete lack of synergies, it would be both infeasible and imprudent to even consider such an acquisition.

Whether or not Choi is right about lack of synergies between HP and Samsung (he would know better than anyone), he’s more than right about the gap in scale. According to IBC, HP’s PC business is even bigger than Choi says in his statement, shipping 64 million units in 2010.

We reported on rumors of Samsung acquiring HP’s personal computing division last week, citing a story in Digitimes about Samsung’s contacts with Taiwanese PC vendors, including some of HP’s current partners.

Samsung’s representatives were not immediately able to comment about these reported contacts. But the company’s stated goal for 2011 is to increase its PC sales by 70%, to 17 million units. It’s still looking to carve out a chunk of HP’s laptop business, through competition if not acquisition. Samsung is one of the companies that most stands to benefit if HP’s PC wing withers.

It’s Todd Bradley’s job to make sure it doesn’t. In an interview with Bloomberg TV’s Emily Chang and Cory Johnson, the Hewlett-Packard EVP, Personal Systems Group head and former Palm CEO commented at length on his own future and that of HP’s personal computing business.

“Depending on what is decided by the board, we could exit as a Fortune 60 company with over $40 billion in sales, very profitable… and a very aggressive force in the marketplace,” Bradley said. Cook reiterated that if the unit is spun off, he would like to stay on to run the new company.

“We’ve lost clarity about what we announced,” he added, calling sunsetting the Touchpad “a prudent business decision” and the less-certain announcement about the Personal Systems Group driven by advice from HP’s securities lawyers to be as transparent with its deliberations as possible. He avoided endorsing the decision to explore splitting the company. instead pointing to the strong future of webOS software and “enormous interest [in webOS] subsequent to our announcement to get out of the hardware business: lots of big potential partners looking at what we can do together.”

“What if the division is sold and you don’t go with it?” Chang asked Bradley. “Would you go elsewhere?” “That’s too many ifs,” Bradley replied. He likewise wouldn’t comment on rumors that HP’s business division might be acquired by Oracle or any particular scenario where part or all of the PSG was sold.

Without interest from Samsung, such a purchase looks much less likely, and a spinoff much more so. Bradley at least sees plenty of upside in HP’s PC business, pointing to its global penetration, its quarterly profit rebound since the 2008/2009 economic collapse and opportunities for growth in new markets and vertical integration.

If HP is split, Bradley would definitely be the new company’s leading advocate and cheerleader, even without the Palm devices he helped champion within HP.

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