Mark Hurd, at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch technology conference:

We didn’t buy Palm to be in the smartphone business. And I tell people that, but it doesn’t seem to resonate well. We bought it for the IP.

Of course it doesn’t resonate well, but it doesn’t matter. HP learned the smartphone lesson the hard way and it’s good news for them they’re not willing to make the same mistakes again.

Now, connecting printers and other small consumer electronic devices to the cloud is another story, and HP seems to be betting big money on that.