HP plans to re-enter smartphone market

PC giant, HP, is contemplating to re-enter in the smartphone segment.

HP's senior director, consumer PC and media tablets, Asia Pacific, Yam Su Yin told PTI that the company is focusing on all segments including tablet PCs, notebook PCs as well as all-in-ones (AIOs). When asked if a smartphone is in the offing, she said: "The answer is yes but I cannot give a timetable. It would be silly if we say no. HP has to be in the game." This has reinforced the earlier reports to this effect.

HP made a big bet on smartphone and tablet space by purchasing Palm (one of the first smartphone makers) for USD 1.2 billion, but soon exited the market after its WebOS based products failed to take off. Even before that HP had a line of smartphone under iPAQ brand name.

HP will be very late to market, as players are like Apple and Samsung are already well entrenched with more than 50 percent market share in the overall smartphone market. And rest of the market is fragmented amongst biggies like Sony, LG, HTC and numerous other players from China like Huawei, ZTE and much smaller regional players in countries like India, China and other countries.

So HP will not only have to face Samsung and Apple but it also have to battle with smaller players like Micromax and UMI.

Asked if it will be able to make up for the lost time, she said, "Being late you have to create a different set of proposition. There are still things that can be done. It's not late. When HP has a smartphone, it will give a differentiated experience."

While there are no details available about HP's smartphone plan as of now, the company is most likely to use Android operating system as it would not want to repeat the same mistake as it had done years' back with WebOS. Windows Phone 8 is the other operating system that HP can bank upon but its ecosystem is not that big as Android.