Hewlett-Packard (HP) has given the word that it will start producing new smartphones for sale in early 2011. HP bought Palm earlier this year and has been looking forward to putting new life into the once powerful PDA maker that ended up nearly disappearing in the smartphone market. Reuters reported that Eric Cador—Senior VP at HP—spoke at an industry conference and said that, “You will see us coming early next year with new phones.” HP also has a tablet in the works called the ‘PalmPad’ that will use a scaled up version of the WebOS operating system that currently powers the Palm Pixi and Pre.

With WebOS 2.0 on the horizon, HP has to start getting ready its new lineup of smartphones—the first that will be produced under HP’s ownership. One of the first of the coming, unannounced devices is codenamed the Palm ‘Mansion’ and will shun the physical keyboard Palm users have grown accustomed to. With its 800 x 480 screen resolution, the Palm Mansion will be moving into new territory for both Palm and HP. HP has not had any success in the smartphone market with its own offerings before and Palm’s last two smartphones had physical keyboards.

The ‘Mansion ‘ might be a stunning success or a flop. It all really depends on how well WebOS 2.0 works on touchscreen only devices. Palm was a pioneer in the use of touchscreens in personal electronic devices way back when the stylus was popular. Hopefully it can translate some of that knowledge (and those precious patents of course) into a sleek, highly function smartphone/OS combination. With everyone jumping ship to cling to Android, it is nice to see a company putting up a fight. Hopefully the Palm/HP efforts will succeed and we’ll see be treated to some amazing smartphones.

Looking forward to some new Palm devices finally? Think the PalmPad is going to work out? Interested in the Palm Mansion? Let me know in the comments.