HP says it will make another smartphone

MAKER OF EXPENSIVE PRINTER INK HP's CEO Meg Whitman has said that the company will take another shot at the smartphone market.

HP's smartphone efforts up until now haven't been all that successful. Following its $1.2bn acquisition of Palm and its WebOS mobile operating system back in 2010, HP released a couple of smartphones, the HP Pre 3 and HP Veer, neither of which flew off the shelves.

The firm also made a foray into the tablet market with its release of the HP Touchpad, which was shortly canned due to disappointing sales and unloaded at fire sale prices to surprised consumers.

However, Dow Jones reports that Whitman has spoken about HP's plans to take on the smartphone market again at some point in the future.

"We are working on this," Whitman said an interview. "We have to ultimately offer a smartphone because in many countries of the world that would be your first computing device... [and] we are a computing company."

However, Whitman was quick to deny speculation that HP might adopt RIM's upcoming Blackberry 10 operating system, likely due to the Canadian smartphone firm's recent failings and dire prospects.

When quizzed about a possible Blackberry licensing deal, Whitman said, "No, that is not a direction that we're going to head."

Whitman added that HP is about 20 percent of the way through its five-year global restructuring plan and foresees slow growth for the coming fiscal year.

HP was unavailable for comment at the time of publication. µ