During the course of a last-Thursday interview with Fox Business Network, Hewlett-Packard (HP) CEO and President Meg Whitman said that a computing company like HP will, in due course, have to foray into the thriving smartphone arena.

Drawing attention to the fact that smartphones are becoming the most popular computing devices worldwide in present times, Whitman said that it is important for HP to take advantage of the smartphone form factor, and mark a presence in the smartphone market.

Whitman told Fox Business: "We have to ultimately offer a smartphone because in many countries of the world that would be your first computing device... we are a computing company."

According to Whitman, people in many countries around the world will apparently do "everything" on a smartphone, for the simple reason that they may "never own a tablet or a PC or a desktop."

With HP's earlier stint with webOS-based mobile devices having failed, Whitman said that the company was now "working on" making a move to venture into the flourishing smartphone arena once again.

Despite the fact that Whitman stopped short of disclosing any timeline about when an HP-branded smartphone is likely to become available, or whether it will be an in-house device or a result of some capability taken over via acquisition, she did say that if HP were to make its second go at mobile devices a success, the company will have to "make sure it gets done right this time."