HP planning to launch Android-based tablet: Report

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.