Hewlett-Packard has begun to shift resources from development of new personal computers to creation of tablets and smartphones as the market of the latter is growing much faster than the market of the former. The company’s management admits that previously the company has failed to create competitive smartphones and tablets and this time the transition will cost a lot of R&D money.

“We are not incrementally changing the business, we are shifting resources from PCs to tablets, from one operating system to another, from one kind of chipset to another,” said Meg Whitman, chief executive officer of HP, during the Morgan Stanley technology, media & telecom conference.

Ms. Whitman admitted that HP’s first attempt to enter the market of tablets and smartphones – the acquisition of Palm – failed to become a success since the executives did not let webOS-based tablets and smartphones to grow and simply pulled the plug on ultra-mobile devices for consumers. Now that HP admits that it was a mistake, it is shifting its efforts to tablets and will eventually shift them to smartphones as well.

“The mission in my area is to make HP a leader in the tablet space and eventually smartphones. Certainly it is not a short term aim [to lead in phones]. It is not something we're looking at for this year. Without looking at specific dates, we are actively looking at our options in that market," said Alberto Torres, the head of HP’s mobile business unit, in an interview with Techradar web-site.

While smartphones remain a long-term project, the company will try to quickly unveil a broad portfolio of tablets for different market segments, including products based on Google Android and Microsoft Windows 8 as well Windows RT operating systems.

“Obviously we are going to look at more premium segments, but here we need to be price competitive. What attracted me to join HP is that when you look to win in tablets, it's not a great leap. You need to understand [the technology of tablets] but the other thing is a game of brand and service and channel reach, and those are things that HP is quite strong on. You're going to see developments in differentiation with connectivity, security and leverage of our expertise,” explained Mr. Torres.

Tags: Hewlett-Packard, HP, Android, Google, Windows, Microsoft, Windows 8, Windows RT