HP vice president Chi-Teik See said HP won’t support 3G in its smartphones until at least next year. Despite 3G’s comparitively fast 384kbps bandwidth and the numerous 3G handsets already available, Chin-Teik noted that 3G occupies just 3% of the cellphone space, calling it a nascent market. He also mentioned that 3G s subscription and hardware costs are prohibitively high. Because of these market conditions, HP’s iPAQ rw6800 and iPAQ hw6900 don’t include 3G support.
Chi-Teik also noted that even though the latest iPAQ models have reasonably big screens, they’re still way too small for people to want to watch video on them. Perhaps he was aware of a survey released last week by RBC Capital Markets, noting that 75% of the 1000 polled have no interest in watching TV on their cellphones.
