HP Large Screen Smartphones on the Way for Emerging Markets: Report
Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) may be ready to jump back into the smartphone market any day now, as a report in The Information said HP is set to unwrap new large-screen, price-conscious handsets aimed at emerging markets in India, China and the Philippines.
In a crowded smartphone market dominated by Apple (AAPL) and Samsung, along with a growing phalanx of low-cost suppliers, can HP get it right this time?
According to the online account, HP’s so-called phablets, or six- and seven-inch display smartphones, will be sold without a corresponding carrier contract for $200 to $250. The comparatively low price indicates the units likely are based on Google’s (GOOG) Android mobile OS.
HP, a long-standing Microsoft (MSFT) partner, has made no secret of its recent work with Google. Earlier this year, ReadWrite reported HP was toiling on an Android-based smartphone, and the vendor already has delivered the Slate 7, its first Android tablet, and a short lineup of Chromebooks.
Still, HP CEO Meg Whitman repeatedly has said HP has no immediate plans to re-enter the smartphone market.
This latest buzz maps to Whitman’s September, 2012 interview with Fox News in which she said, “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 smartphones.”
HP is far enough removed from its disastrous $1.2 billion Palm buyout and subsequent WebOS thumb bashing for Whitman’s description of the company’s smartphone history as a “detour” not to raise eyebrows. And, her admission last year that HP has “got to get it right this time,” was among the candidates for understatement of the year.
Whitman already has suggested that HP’s smartphone strategy will be to build the brand outside of the U.S.
“We have to ultimately offer a smartphone because in many countries of the world that is your first computing device,” she previously told Fox News. “We’re a computing company, we have to take advantage of that form factor,” she said.
HP hasn’t commented on the latest reports and time’s running out this year for The Information’s report to hit the mark, unless the vendor has a New Year’s Eve surprise in store.
