It would be an understatement to say that Hewlett-Packard is going
through a rough patch. In the last reportedly quarterly earnings, the
company had announced 7 percent year-on year fall in its profits.
Though most part of this loss was accredited to the $8.8 billion
write-down that the company took for the Autonomy acquisition, but even
in the PCs and laptops space things are not looking rosy for HP.
In a
bid to change that, HP is now trying to make a comeback of sorts in the
mobile devices segment. As per news reports in ReadWrite, HP is
currently working on Android tablet, which will run on NVIDIA's Tegra 4
processor.
According to The Verge, HP has been working on this
tablet since Thanksgiving last year and it should be out soon but no
further details of this tablet are available as of now.
There are
also murmurs doing the rounds that HP might look at offering
Android-powered smartphone in the future. However, the company's CEO HP
Meg Whitman had recently made a statement that HP has no plans to introduce
smartphones in 2013, so one may have to wait a bit longer for the same.
However,
this news of HP now looking at offering Android-based software come as a
bit of shock considering the company had acquired Palm in circa 2010
for $1.2 billion in an all-cash deal. HP had also released WebOS based
tablets (a 9.7-inch TouchPad tablet) and smartphones but failed to make
any impact in the market. It then ditched the mobile business
altogether. Now, it appears to have changed its mind and is giving
android a second look.
We are not very sure whether HP would be
able to make any significant with its Android offering either.
Currently, there are plenty of Android OEMs already in the market and we
can't see HP bringing anything new to the table.