HP has abandoned Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform in favour of smartphones based on WebOS, but confirms that a Windows 7 slate is still on the cards.
Microsoft is gearing up for a Q4 launch of Windows Phone 7 but nobody at HP expects an invitation to the party.
The PC manufacturer is ditching Microsoft’s next-gen smartphone OS, and will build its new wave of smartphones around the WebOS which HP obtained through its
US$1.2 billion acquisition of Palm Computing earlier this year.
In an
interview with CNBC Todd Bradley, executive veep at Hewlett-Packard’s Personal Systems Group, says the company “will exclusively use WebOS” for its smartphones, but “we won’t do a Microsoft phone”.
The decision is not expected to have a major financial impact on Microsoft – HP has never been a star player in the smartphone space, having failed to capitalise on the success of its iPaq handhelds when the market shifted from PDAs to phones.
But it’s an undeniable blow to the company’s morale as it struggles to win market share and mobile mojo with the launch of Windows Phone 7.
Even Dell is putting a dollar each way, with a series of Android devices (beginning with the
Streak smartphone-slate) alongside
planned Windows Phone 7 products.
However, Microsoft is still counting on HP to release a tablet powered by Windows 7, which Bradley confirmed in the CNBC interview. Details of the first device in this series, named the Slate 500,
leaked out some months back and last week saw an
official if accidental confirmation from HP’s own site.
HP has also been granted a trademark on the term “PalmPad”, which some tip as being the brand for a family of WebOS slates, although this could also be simply a case of HP ensuring copyright protection from future products bearing that name.