Surveying the mobile landscape: HP

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	Home / Cell phones / Business smartphones

	Surveying the mobile landscape: HP	By Philip Berne, 30 December 2007

With hardly a device in sight for the past year, does HP still make smartphones? Philip Berne remembers what we've seen, and suggests a possible future for the iPaq brand.

Surprisingly, there is still plenty of interest in HP’s mobile phone products, even though the company hasn’t really released a product in quite some time. Sure, there was the iPaq 510 Voice Messenger, but that phone was difficult to find at a trade show, let alone at a business office. Then, in the past year alone, HP has shown off a navigation device, an innovative new 12-key smartphone, and a new QWERTY-keyboard phone, but again, none of these have materialized, either as finalized review units or full-fledged retail devices. So, what’s going on at HP?

Cameras? We don’t make no stinking cameras

We’re not sure, but the future of HP’s handheld business seems a bit ominous. The camera business seemed to have been following a similar pattern. New models were announced, but didn’t make much of an impression if and when they made it to market. In November, HP announced that HP-branded cameras would be built by someone else. This isn’t a first for the company. For a short while, HP sold Apple iPods under a strange "Apple iPod by HP" brand. Unfotunately, the devices were considered second-class citizens in both the Apple and the HP worlds, and now HP sells no music player of its own branding. If cameras from a new OEM fail to catch on, we can see those devices heading the same way.

Of course, this brings us back to phones. Unlike the market for cameras and iPods, HP actually has some brand cache in the smartphone market. Though few folks actually use an iPaq today, many people we speak with anecdotally relate their early Windows Mobile experience on HP iPaq devices. If HP could create a device that created some buzz, there is enough of a sentimental audience that might give the device a second look.

Like nothing we’ve seen so far

That device won’t be the iPaq 600. Even with it’s interesting scroll wheel / keypad design, it just isn’t innovative enough. We’ve always been told that the iPaq 900 that we’ve seen does not represent the final hardware for that device, so we’re hoping that HP can pull something out of its sleeve. But maybe the company just doesn’t want to make something better. Maybe HP is tired of phones.

HP has been focusing a great deal on the home. Most of the exciting products we’ve seen at HP trade events have been Home Media servers, television sets with processors and computer parts built into them, and touch sensitive PCs designed to be used in the kitchen or the front hallway.

It ain’t a laptop and it ain’t a smartphone

Perhaps the logical extension for HP is no longer the smartphone. Maybe what the company needs is a mobile internet device. HP has some effective touchscreen technology already on the market. And, the company has good mobile experience at the smartphone and laptop level. We could imagine HP putting together a solid MID, with good integration with the other digital home products that the company sells. Then, bring in the Voodoo brand for high performance, and let’s see what HP can really do.