PreCentral: Whitman: HP's new smartphone won't come in 2013

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In her Fox Business Network interview last month HP CEO Meg Whitman all but confirmed that HP would in fact be stepping back into the smartphone market all the while inferring that said smartphone may already be in the pipeline. Despite owning their own mobile operating system - our beloved webOS - nobody assumed that HP would even conceive the thought of giving webOS another go after their floundering attempt the first time around. Instead, the speculation instantly pointed to Microsoft's upcoming Windows Phone 8 operating system, a thought that makes a lot of since given HP and Microsoft's long standing relationship and HP's plans to make Windows 8 tablets in the near future. Then out of nowhere a GLBenchmark log containing a 'bender' device manufactured by 'hp' running Android 4.0.4 hit the interwebs. Of course, those sorts of logs can be easily faked, but it certainly kicked into high gear the speculating about HP's supposed upcoming return to smartphones.

Fast forward to this week's HP analyst day. During the meeting, Whitman reportedly admitted that her prior comments in regards to HP entering the smartphone market had created a bit of a ruckus. She then went on to state: "We don't have any plans to introduce a smartphone in 2013, but we've got to start thinking about what is our unique play, how do we capture this element of the personal computing market?"

So 2013 won't be the year of the return of the HP smartphone. It'll be the year that they think about the return of the HP smartphone. HP's PC business is continuing to falter, and even in spite of their denials of this becoming the "post-PC era", the company knows that mobile is going to have to be a part of their future. They even created a new business unit just for mobile devices like tablets and smartphones (despite already having one that they're spinning off).

The mobile device market is rapidly growing. Things have advanced a long way in the past year, and there's no telling how far forward we'll have moved in mobility by the time 2014 hits and HP's maybe ready to put out a new smartphone. No matter what the operating system HP's new smartphone is destined to run, they'd be well adviced not to take too long before the market gets too far away from them. Also, you know, consider using webOS. It'll cost lots of money regardless of what path HP takes, might as well try a unique one (again). Nudge nudge, wink wink.

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