HP to release consumer-oriented smartphone

Hewlett-Packard is planning on releasing a consumer-oriented smartphone, making a sharp break with their previous plan of providing more enterprise-focused devices, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

The unnamed device will be released first in Europe, sometime in the late fourth quarter, and will be marketed by a mobile carrier and sold in retail stores. The phone will run on Windows Mobile 6.1, be a touch-screen device and have a full QWERTY keyboard. A worldwide release is scheduled for sometime in 2009. 

The device is the latest in HP's line of iPaq devices, which have been marketed as business-oriented devices similar to some of Research In Motion's BlackBerry handsets, though HP does not have nearly the market share that RIM has. 

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