HP has just released a new Chromebook recently, as part of an announcement about a series of new Chromebooks, but they’re not done yet. On its website we can already see mentions of a certain “HP Chromebook 11”:
A tipster sent Engadget some documents that show a list of specs, too, which includes a 11.6″ display with an “HD” display (most likely the usual 1366×768), with a 0.7-inch frame (so pretty thin), and weighing 2.42 pounds. It will also have 6.5 hours of battery life, and 100GB of free Google Drive storage for 2 years. The price is not shown, but you can bet it’s going to be less than $300, possibly even $200.
HP has become very aggressive lately about pushing both Chromebooks and Android tablets into the market. Up until Microsoft’s announcement of the Surface tablet, of which they only found out about a couple of days before from Microsoft, HP used to be Microsoft’s #1 partner in the PC industry. Not anymore.
HP seems to focus a lot more on its relationship with Google these days, and I think this is just the beginning. HP has said they may consider entering the smartphone market again in the near future, and I think we’ll see them launch an Android smartphone sometime next year, too.
Of course, especially since we’re talking about HP here, it’s hard to get excited about an HP smartphone. Until they can change their attitude from “making good enough products” for a certain market (which is code word for “mediocre”), and until they try to create best-of-breed products, it’s going to be hard for them to succeed in the smartphone, and even tablet market, especially against established players such as Apple, Samsung, Sony, and so on.
I do think they will do pretty well with the Chromebooks, since they already knew how to make pretty good netbooks before, and that plays to their expertise a little more than making good smartphones. However, they will still need to show how committed they are to making good products, and to pushing them to the sales channels.