For those who don’t remember, last year HP brought on a new CEO, Meg Whitman who replaced the failure that was Leo Apotheker. One of the first things Whitman did upon her arrival was look over webOS, which ultimately resulted in the OS’s cancellation and the death of the webOS main team and future webOS products. In the aftermath, Whitman and HP decided to keep webOS alive, but as an open source OS, much like Android. But since the TouchPad’s failure and fire sale, we have heard anything on HP’s plans for the mobile smartphone market, until today.
Whitman spoke with Fox Business News and said that ultimately, HP will have to jump back into the smartphone game, if they want to survive. Whitman said in many markets and for many people, a smartphone is their first computing experience and HP is a computing company and so they must take advantage of that form factor.
With that all being said, we know that HP at some point will have to create a new smartphone, be it webOS, Android or perhaps Windows Phone 8. What we don’t know is how soon they plan to implement this strategy, but most of these device or operating systems being updated or being release in the third and fourth quarters and with RIM’s BB10 debuting in the first quarter of 2013, we’d have to assume that it would have to be in the next 6-9 months, if they want to stay relevant and compete.
Source: Fox Business News