Chicago (IL) – A somewhat surprising rumor about Hewlett-Packard’s boutique PC unit VoodooPC surfaced earlier today on Techgage, stating that “VoodooPC as we know it might not be around for much longer.”  

Techgage referred to an email that “apparently” is circulated within Hewlett-Packard (HP), talking about layoffs that also affect the VoodooPC unit, which HP acquired in September 2006. The website also noted that VoodooPC has been returning power supplies to manufacturer Topower.

We were not able to receive an answer from HP or VoodooPC on the rumor, but industry voices feel that such a move would be very unusual. Analyst Rob Enderle, who was an advocate of the acquisition two years ago, said that not only would such a move be surprising since VoodooPC has not been shipping its highly anticipated Envy 133 notebook yet, but also because it would come before the lucrative Christmas shopping season. If HP in fact would want to shut VoodooPC down, a Q1 timeframe would make more sense.

We believe that this rumor should be taken with a grain of salt. VoodooPC does not make much revenue by itself, but isn’t much of a drag on HP’s expenses either. Also, while HP wanted VoodooPC as a high-profile gaming unit, the small company was always described as HP’s “Formula 1” team that develops high-end technologies, which eventually trickle down in the mainstream PC market.   

With the exception of the Blackbird gaming PC, there haven’t been much news around new high-end technologies and even less about technologies that would make it into more affordable machines. In some way, it appears that rival Dell has a much better grip on creating PCs with unique features. However, it is also clear that while there will always be a high-end PC market for people who are willing to spend more on a paint job than most people spend on an entire computer system, the general PC market has shifted dramatically to more affordable computers well below the $1000 mark.