HP developing smartphone for 'post-PC era'
Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman on Friday revealed that the company is working on a new smartphone, and plans to market the unit heavily in foreign countries where handsets may be a consumer's sole computing device.
In an early morning interview on the Fox Business Network (via Mercury News), Whitman outlined the company's future plans to become relevant in the smartphone arena, a market in which HP has not been successful.
In answering a question regarding whether HP intends to build a smartphone using the assets acquired from its purchase of Palm in 2010, Whitman said, "We are working on this." She went on to say that the company "did take a detour into smartphone, and we've gotta get it right this time."
Whitman appears to be taking the company's reentry into the saturated smartphone market seriously, and said her mantra to the team working on the project is: "Better right than faster than we should be there."
"We have to ultimately offer a smartphone because in many countries of the world that is your first computing device," Whitman said. "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 the smartphone. We're a computing company, we have to take advantage of that form factor."
The CEO made note of HP's wide-spanning business model, saying that she wants the company to offer the best products from enterprise to tablets and convertibles, "all the way to smartphones." As a short aside, Whitman pointed out that HP recently took over the top spot in workstation sales from Apple.
HP abandoned smartphone development in 2011 after failing to gain traction with devices based on Palm's webOS platform, which the company ultimately made open source.
Whitman gave no hints as to what operating system the upcoming smartphone would use, or when the device would be ready for market.
In an early morning interview on the Fox Business Network (via Mercury News), Whitman outlined the company's future plans to become relevant in the smartphone arena, a market in which HP has not been successful.
In answering a question regarding whether HP intends to build a smartphone using the assets acquired from its purchase of Palm in 2010, Whitman said, "We are working on this." She went on to say that the company "did take a detour into smartphone, and we've gotta get it right this time."
Whitman appears to be taking the company's reentry into the saturated smartphone market seriously, and said her mantra to the team working on the project is: "Better right than faster than we should be there."
"We have to ultimately offer a smartphone because in many countries of the world that is your first computing device," Whitman said. "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 the smartphone. We're a computing company, we have to take advantage of that form factor."
The CEO made note of HP's wide-spanning business model, saying that she wants the company to offer the best products from enterprise to tablets and convertibles, "all the way to smartphones." As a short aside, Whitman pointed out that HP recently took over the top spot in workstation sales from Apple.
HP abandoned smartphone development in 2011 after failing to gain traction with devices based on Palm's webOS platform, which the company ultimately made open source.
Whitman gave no hints as to what operating system the upcoming smartphone would use, or when the device would be ready for market.
Comments
Way to get on the bandwagon...
Yeah, HP? Hi. You know that WebOS thing you had that you destroyed? Use that. Only do it right this time.
The last thing Apple needs is another company to sue for IP infringement.
Or do you have a suggestion for the HP phone name?
Good move on HP's part. This is the correct step - because this is where things are going to go. Use your cell phone as your computer - use some protocol to drive a monitor, keyboard/mouse; LTE to get to the net, and then some sort of cloud based storage.
This will be another fun HP disaster to watch!
"HP developing smartphone for 'post-PC era'"
Ummm...didn't they mean the "post-Meg Whitman era"?
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppleInsider
"We have to ultimately offer a smartphone because in many countries of the world that is your first computing device," Whitman said. "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 the smartphone. We're a computing company, we have to take advantage of that form factor."
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppleInsider
Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman on Friday revealed that the company is working on a new smartphone, and plans to market the unit in foreign countries where handsets may be a consumer's sole computing device.
Let me see if I got this right... Meg has identified a market where the people are so poor that food is too expensive, and she wants to build a smart phone for that market? Meg, Meg, Meg, think grass huts. Where will they plug in the charger? Where's the closest cell tower that hasn't been raided for the copper wire? Is HP ready to trade goats for Smart phones? Show me your marketing plan, heck, show me your business plan.
One thing I can assure HP is that they will have NO competition in their target market.
The only sad thing is that she's still being paid a fortune for her inane leadership. At this point they could save lots of money by just using a potted plant as a CEO. They would probably get better results, too.
RIP... Good name for the phone and the company.
At this stage, I think the only way they can pull off WebOS would be to have as close to a one-click recompile of iOS apps to work on WebOS as possible. The biggest complaint about Android seems to be developing for so many devices and the SDK. If HP has a small hardware lineup like Apple and an easy way to port apps over so they can be deployed simultaneously, it would give it a boost. They'd have to undercut Apple significantly on price too.
The other option would be to tack parts of WebOS onto Android but then it's just another Android phone and probably not a very good one. At least they'd have apps from the start though.
Oh, they're on that too:
http://www.theonion.com/video/hp-on-that-cloud-thing-that-everyone-else-is-talki,28789/
It was great for Apple. It completely removed a potential very large competitor. I bought more AAPL when that happened
I like Meg. How else would you respond if you were their CEO?
This is the company that gave SJ his first job. It is so sad
Originally Posted by Red Oak
This is the company that gave SJ his first job. It is so sad
Thought that was Atari.
Quote:
Originally Posted by noelos
Oh, they're on that too:
http://www.theonion.com/video/hp-on-that-cloud-thing-that-everyone-else-is-talki,28789/
Must... Have... Body Doo
It goes beyond that. Even if it had made sense to drop the Touchpad and WebOS, the way they handled it was stupid. They dumped the price to $99 - even though the market was willing to pay a lot more. A lot of people (including me) bought some from HP and sold them on eBay for a nice profit. HP could have dropped the price to $299 and sold just as many - but would have had several hundred million dollars in their pockets.
Furthermore, offering to sell WebOS might have been a good idea - if they had done it BEFORE they dumped all the Touchpads on the market and convinced potential buyers that no one would pay a reasonable price for WebOS products.