Back in 2010, when HP acquired Palm, hopes were high about the company. The $1.2 billion deal allowed HP to make use of Palm’s OS on its tablets and smartphones. It was expected that the deal would finally allow HP to take off in the smartphone market.
But all these hopes came crashing down when webOS devices absolutely failed to gain traction. Since then, HP has focused on its traditional PC market and was not expected to come back to making smartphones anytime soon.
However, quitting on a $250B market is simply not an option for HP and its new CEO, Meg Whitman, seems well aware of it. In a recent interview, she has admitted that “HP ultimately has to offer a smartphone” and that her company was “working on this”.
While these hints are very vague, they do affirm that HP is not ready to let go of the smartphone race, something which is fast becoming a do-or-die option for many hardware vendors. Also of interest is that Whitman didn’t reveal what OS HP is going to use when it launches a smartphone. The failure of webOS is well-known and HP may want to distance itself from it. In that case, Windows Phone may be the ideal OS to land on a possible HP smartphone.