HP Trademarks Lead To Smartphone Speculation

Gyst, Veer and Myte may be the names of the planned Hewlett-Packard webOS-running smartphones headed for retail shelves in 2011. The PC maker, which threw itself into the smartphone arena earlier this year with its $1.2bn acquisition of Palm, applied for trademarks on the names with the US Patent and Trademark Office, PocketNow.com first reported.

HP has promised new smartphones running an updated version of the OS, which it has so far only launched on the Palm Pre 2.

Ideas in the pipeline

“We’ve got some other ideas in the pipeline we’re not ready to talk about yet,” Jon Rubinstein, the former chief executive of Palm who now oversees the brand at HP, said during a keynote interview at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco last month.

A few weeks later, at the D: Dive Into Mobile event, Rubinstein confirmed that the devices – several “radically different devices”, including a tablet and several smartphones – will arrive in 2011.

Analyst Keith Bachman, with BMO Capital Markets, later narrowed down the timeline, telling investors – after meetings with more than 30 tech companies throughout Asia, according to Forbes – that the HP tablet can be expected in March.

That HP should release the Palm Pre 2 as its first webOS 2.0 device struck some as a bit anti-climatic, and various media cites reported Rubinstein, at the D:Dive event, as coming out on the defensive. “This is just the beginning,” he said, according to the Associated Press. “It’s not ‘game over.'”

PocketNow reports that it has heard of four possible new smartphones, writing, “We’ve previously heard of evidence pointing to devices code-named Broadway, Windsor, Mantaray and Stingray – and with Broadway allegedly referring to the rumored Pixi 2, it’s possible that this latter trio of monikers and the Gyst, Myte and Veer trademarks may be three and the same.”

The site added, “However, that’s pure speculation on our part.”

WebOS

This year, the site added, HP has only applied for 31 trademarks, just four of which – and that’s including the Gyst, Veer and Myte – reference being related to smartphones.

Rubinstein also noted at the D:Dive event that Leo Apotheker, HP’s new chief executive, following the resignation of Mark Hurd, is “really jazzed” about webOS. Hurd resigned on 6 August, after HP’s board of directors found that his behavior with a former HP contractor violated HP’s Standards of Business Conduct.

Assuaging any fears of an unsettled company, HP director Marc Andreessen, during a conference call addressing the resignation, said that HP “is not about any one person”. He added, “HP is a great company, and the reason HP is great is the people, and the people are the reason HP will continue to be great.”