Dec 10
The HP iPAQ Glisten (eww) may be an underwhelming, stock Windows Mobile 6.5 phone. But HP isn’t out of the smartphone business; in fact, they never were, HP’s Mike Hockey said to me today.
HP has been releasing one or two phones a year for a few years, but the last one we actually saw on a US carrier before the Glisten was in 2006. The HP iPAQ 510 from 2007 and the HP iPAQ 910 from 2008 never made it to a carrier in the US, but they were more popular with carriers in Europe and Latin America, Hockey said.
The company has refocused on getting phones into US carrier channels, acknowledging that unlocked devices just aren’t going to sell over here in large quantities. So expect to see iPaq phones appearing on US carriers at least annually from here on out. That will allow HP to sell to “prosumers” and small businesses as well as big enterprise buyers.
HP also has a “tight, ongoing” relationship with Microsoft, Hockey said. It sounds like HP will stick with Windows phones for a while going forward – and that explains, in many ways, the major problem with the Glisten. Unadorned Windows Mobile 6.5 just isn’t attractive to anyone except large enterprise IT buyers right now.
Before you mock, remember that Apple only releases one phone a year, but it’s a great device. If you want to be a presence in the phone market, you can do it with one phone a year, but that phone has to be a real differentiator. The Glisten, with its creaky generic Windows Mobile 6.5 build, just isn’t it.
All that could change next year, if Windows Mobile 7 impresses. HP better hope it does.
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