ВIt appears that Hewlett-Packard's "on-again, off-again" relationship with smartphones is back on. HP dabbled in the smartphone space when it purchased Palm back in 2010. However, HP let the smartphone lineup and the accompanying webOS operating system languish before eventually casting the entire platform aside to focus on its business/enterprise efforts.
However, HP CEO Meg Whitman is now singing a different tune. In an interview with Fox Business News, Whitman emphasized that HP wants to offer a top-to-bottom family of computing products and that a smartphone is a key pillar in that strategy.
"We are working on this," said Whitman. "We have to ultimately offer a smartphone because in many countries of the world that would be your first computing device. There will be countries around the world where people may never own a tablet or a pc or a desktop. They will do everything on a smartphone… we have to take advantage of that form-factor.”
Whitman added that the timing has to be right before it decides to come back to the market with a fresh smartphone. "We've got to get it right this time. Better right than faster than we should be there."
So while HP looks to be jumping back into the smartphone fray at some point, don't expect it to go buying another smartphone company like troubled Research in Motion.
"No, that is not a direction that we're going to head."
