Compaq was founded on February 16, 1982.[1] The Compaq name was said to have been derived from "Compatibility and Quality" but this explanation was an afterthought. The name was chosen from many suggested by Ogilvy and Mather, it being the name least rejected.
Following the acquisition of Digital Equipment Corporation in 1998, Compaq tweaked their logo slightly.[4] Most visibly, the weight of the wordmark was reduced, and the top terminal of the C was curved down slightly; the tail of the Q was also sharpened. Over the following months, Compaq began rolling out a new brand strategy, emphasizing the letter 'Q' of the wordmark as an initialism for 'Quality'.[5]
In September 2000, Compaq began rolling out advertising with the new slogan, "Inspiration Technology".[6]
On September 3, 2001, Hewlett-Packard announced that an agreement had been reached with Compaq to merge the two companies.[7] In May 2002, after passing a shareholder vote, HP officially merged with Compaq. Prior to this, plans had been in place to consolidate the companies' product teams and product lines.[8] The merger occurred after a proxy fight with Bill Hewlett's son Walter, who objected to the merger. Compaq itself had bought Tandem Computers in 1997 (which had been started by ex-HP employees), and Digital Equipment Corporation in 1998. After HP merged with Compaq, HP's new ticker symbol became "HPQ", a combination of the two previous symbols, "HWP" and "CPQ", to show the significance of the alliance and also key letters from the two companies Hewlett-Packard and Compaq (the latter company being famous for its "Q" logo on many of its post-1993 products).
In May 2007, HP revealed a new logo for its Compaq brand, which first took effect on later models of the Presario V6000 laptop.[10] Notebooks (and desktops) under the Compaq brand haven't been produced since mid-2013, when it was rebranded as the HP 2000 series notebooks (which happened back in 2010), later rebranded to HP Laptop series (also known as HP Essential Laptops on HP's Shop site) in 2014. This took effect until 2012, when Compaq was fully merged with and since discontinued.
While the brand is still owned by HP Inc., they started to license the brand to other companies since 2014. One of the companies that currently licensed the Compaq brand is Positivo Technologia (originally GlobalK) for use in their laptops for Brazil market since 2014.
↑Greene, Tim (June 15, 1998). "Compaq airs post-merger plan". Network World – via ProQuest. "Compaq also added a little dazzle to its image with a new logo."
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