Here’s the first report I’ve seen that gets into the nitty-gritty behind the possible supply chain effects of HP’s PC spinoff/sale.

TrendForce was good enough to pull together the PC market share rankings and puts forth a cogent explanation of several possible outcomes, including — believe it or not — a potential hindrance to the Foxconn manufacturing tank.

Interestingly, while many pundits don’t believe the Taiwanese ODMs have the financial girth to absorb HP’s market-leading PC unit, one of the emerging possibilities would be Samsung, whose incentive to snatch it up would go (far) beyond box sales. Indeed, as TrendForce points out, Samsung could leverage the PC chain to create additional sales for its components and batteries. Samsung is flush with cash — more than $55 billion on its balance sheet, of which $20 billion is in cash or equivalents. (The head of HP’s PC unit says it is worth more than $10 billion.) It could handle the financial strain of taking on HP’s PC arm, even though revenue runs in the tens of billions per quarter and its operating profit has grown seven of the past eight quarters.

If an outside suitor doesn’t materialize, HP has a successful track record of spinning off businesses, with Agilent being the most prominent. If that happens, the supply chain status quo might be maintained.

Something to think about.