Why all the Fuss about HP and Smartphones?
Posted by Chris Leckness on 10/6/08 in iPAQ
Over the last couple days, my google email alerts have been going bananas with blasts about HP and their “Smartphones”. Most of the articles i’ve read had misleading titles like, “HP to get into the Smartphone Arena” or “HP readying their first smartphone”. Huh? What the heck? First What? What are these guys smoking. Even if you don’t know the definition of a “Smartphone”, HP has already had the HP iPAQ 514 Smartphone. If your definition is even looser, HP has had Pocket PC Phones for years. (some call PPC Phones Smartphones too)
Let’s take this one from Tom’s Hardware UK…
Now that Blackberry is giving its a market a little more wiggle room and introducing a smartphone that’s geared at both work and play, it’s not surprising to see other companies try and pull off the same feat. What is surprising, is when that company is HP.
According to the Wall Street Journal, which cites “people briefed on the plan,” the company will soon be launching a smartphone. Surprise number one out of the way, these folks say it will hit Europe in two months time, but wait, there’s more; this phone from HP, a company known to be all corporate, will also be marketed at consumers.
Did the iPAQ 514 fly so far under the radar that nobody even realized HP already made a “Smartphone”? The HP “Oak” as some are expecting in Europe soon, has been rumored for almost a year already.
Anyhow, enough griping that people didn’t even know that HP has already been there, done that, and has the T-shirt, lets talk about the new Smartphone that HP apparently has in the works. We’ll share more as we know more.
Written by Chris Leckness · Filed Under iPAQ
Tagged: hp ipaq, hp oak, hp smartphone
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Microsoft is the one that started the confusion about what is smart and what isn’t… now they have abandoned that definition and now we have WinMo Std and WinMo Pro.
If it does email, web, cal and contacts (and most obviously telephone of some sort) it’s a smartphone device.
That being said HP’s first smartphone devices were years and many devices ago like the 63xx series… maybe even older as I was not into HP’s earlier smartphones… So my guess is these emails you’ve seen have been influenced by HP propaganda, aimed at renewing their smartphone image. ;)
Good to see I am not the only one who thought my blog reader went back in time.
I have been waiting for the HP Oak’s form factor forever - a touchscreen with a numeric keypad on front and a QWERTY slide-out keyboard! I don’t know if their phones are any good, though. Hope so…because unless the Touch Pro overwhelms me, I’ll be getting the Oak.