A long time ago, before smartphones were a thing, HP made some of the best personal digital assistants on the face of this planet. Technically they were manufactured by HTC, who wasn’t even known as HTC at the time, but whatever. The first time I used WiFi technology was with an HP Windows Mobile PDA that had a PCMCIA 802.11b card inserted into it via a sleeve on the back which made the device about as thick as a dictionary.

Fast forward to today and HP has zero relevancy in the mobile devices industry. Zero. Their laptops are garbage. Their tablets are total pieces of crap. And while there was a small glimmer of hope they would take webOS and turn it into something meaningful, they screwed that up too.

So what’s next?

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Them in this case being the hundreds of companies making Android devices. According to DigiTimes, HP will have a smartphone running Google’s mobile OS on store shelves as early as this year. No word on specs, but I have an insanely hard time believing HP will push the envelope.