In an interview with the BBC, HP CEO Leo Apotheker revealed that the products (widely expected to be webOS smartphones and tablets) HP will announce on February 9th will be available for sale just a few weeks later. “HP will stop making announcements for stuff it doesn’t have. When HP makes announcements, it will be getting ready to ship,” he said.
Apotheker also revealed the new product line will get a new name under the HP brand. It suggests that HP will continue to distance itself from the Palm brand. For example, webOS has already dropped the Palm prefix in favour of HP’s own.
HP will also make a follow-up announcement on March 14th. According to Apotheker, this event will be HP’s “secret answer” to competitors and will outline the “vision of what HP is capable of in the future.”
Could the February 9th event be smaller in scale than expected? For example, could HP defer announcing its webOS tablets (codenamed Topaz and Opal) until March?