Taiwanese website DigiTimes is reporting that Hewlett-Packard has made inquires to several Taiwanese device manufactures about smartphones. Dell is said to have made similar advances.

The companies said to have been contacted by HP for price quotes include High Tech Computer, Compal Electronics, Mitac International, Asustek Computer, Inventec Appliances and Quanta Computer. According to DigiTimes, High Tech Computer already gets over 50% of its revenues from HP with the iPAQ series.

As HP and Dell are the two most popular Pocket PC device vendors, it would be no surprise should they choose to offer a smartphone based on another Microsoft operating system, such as Pocket PC Phone Edition, PDA first and phone second, but more likely Smartphone 2002, phone first and PDA second. Both smartphone operating systems, like Pocket PC 2002, is based on Windows CE.