HP plans another smartphone

Written by

Jeremy C. Owens for Mercurynews.com:

Hewlett-Packard is working on a new smartphone as its core personal computers and printer businesses faces growing challenges, CEO Meg Whitman said in an interview Friday morning.

Of course, it wasn’t too long before Whitman stepped into the CEO role at HP that the company killed off its Palm division, which was making a smartphone.

Whitman stopped short of offering details; Owens opines that the “new Windows Mobile” is a possibility, or maybe Android. What, no webOS?



  • Canucker

    Wow, just wow. I can see the lines forming right now for a cell phone from a company that managed to hang, draw and quarter Palm within months of acquisition. Just what the world needs (next to a Dell phone). Memo from Steve Ballmer: OK Windows OEMs, make Windows Phones or we’ll make our own. (That’s not Nokia behind the curtain, it’s Bill in an excited state).

    BTW, was the Windows Mobile note, a quip? I wouldn’t put it past HP to resurrect WinMo as they still think its 2007).

    • Peter Cohen

      It was. I should put it in quotes, since that’s what he said. :)

  • http://twitter.com/jeffzugale Jeff Zugale

    Excellent, Meg, it’s great to have plans. But real companies ship.

    Call us when you’re shipping.

  • http://twitter.com/aaronmb Aaron Benedict

    I’d like to give Whitman the benefit of the doubt here. She wasn’t the one who killed WebOS or the HP smartphones. That was the previous CEO whose name I can’t remember. He wanted to turn HP into a services company and killed the mobile devices they were starting to turn out. Personally I’d love to see them using the open sourced WebOS.

    • Canucker

      That was Leo Apotheker. A man about as diametrically opposed to the original Hewlett and Packard spirit as you can find on the planet.

      • http://twitter.com/aaronmb Aaron Benedict

        Thanks. I’m sure that both Hewlett and Packard were spinning in their graves when he wanted to do that.

  • Mother Hydra

    Too little, too late. Headline a year from now: After disappointing earnings HP becomes also-ran in cloud services infrastructure business, Dell holds up rear of pack.