HP to return to smartphone market

HP is looking to move back into the smartphone market, its CEO has said.

A year after the firm's failing with the Pre 3 smartphone and its webOS operating system, HP is developing a new smartphone. HP's CEO, Meg Whitman, confirmed the news in an interview with Fox Business.
"My view is we have to ultimately offer a smartphone because in many countries of the world, that is your first computing device," said Whitman.

"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 are a computing company we have to take advantage of that form-factor."

There was no hint on details of the device given by Whitman or a time frame as to when we can expect it. She did express, however, the importance of getting it right this time around.

"In the end, I would love to be able to provide all the way from the most fabulous workstations to desktops, to laptops, to our tablets and convertibles, all the way to the smartphone," said Whitman. "But we did take a detour into smartphones, and we've got to get it right this time. So we're working to make sure that, when we do this, it will be the right thing for HP and we will be successful."

HP used to sell a mobile devices running Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS. However, it went on to acquire Palm and its webOS operating system. It would make sense then, for this new smartphone, and possibly other devices, to run on webOS unless the firm ditches it for a more mainstream option like Android or Windows Phone 8.