News - HP CEO Meg Whitman says firm will again offer a smartphone

[HEXUS]

Is it the HP Bender, running Android Ice Cream Sandwich?

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[Malphas]

The problem is trying to sell a combined hardware and software smartphone simply isn't going to work unless you happen to be Apple. They could just sell phones running Android, which would require no effort and would be an almost guaranteed success, but then you're basically in a commodity market, and the margins are becoming absolutely razor thin as Chinese players like Huawei and ZTE are muscling further in all the time. The real money is in controlling the software stack and taking a cut from app sales, but HP are hardly qualified to get into that game, even Microsoft are going to have a hard time pushing WinPho so I'd rate HP's chances of having a successful operating system as slim to none.

[crossy]

Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett-Packard admitted the company is “working on” a new smartphone product with which to succeed in the market.

Dumb idea. Strike that - I meant ... REALLY dumb idea.

Incidentally an HP smartphone has recently appeared in benchmark results, codenamed “Bender”

Sorry, it's got to be said ... if they think I'm buying that then they can kiss my shiny metal ass (one for all the Futurama fans)

The problem is trying to sell a combined hardware and software smartphone simply isn't going to work unless you happen to be Apple. They could just sell phones running Android, which would require no effort and would be an almost guaranteed success, but then you're basically in a commodity market, and the margins are becoming absolutely razor thin as Chinese players like Huawei and ZTE are muscling further in all the time. The real money is in controlling the software stack and taking a cut from app sales, but HP are hardly qualified to get into that game, even Microsoft are going to have a hard time pushing WinPho so I'd rate HP's chances of having a successful operating system as slim to none.

Kind of agree here - I can't really see an "HP angle" in this - after all Samsung have got the design angle sewn up. Only real USP I can see for Bender (hee hee hee!) is if it's OS is somehow extended to fit more easily into a corporate environment - so it prints to wireless printers (HP ones of course), has one-step integration into Exchange, etc, etc. Smartphones are a bad idea, tablet on the other hand, not so much...