Gandhi said the phone will ship unhooked from a specified carrier's service, so it will be up to the user to arrange cellular service. But HP plans to also work with carriers that would bundle the phone with their services, he added.

Gandhi said the iPaq 510 is the first iPaq device to provide over-the-air device management capabilities, which HP acquired with its purchase of Bitfone Corp. An IT manager can diagnose and repair a smart phone over the air, send a software upgrade or wipe off all data from a stolen device.

With the dual-mode network capability, an employee can use the smart phone instead of a desktop phone while in the office and over the Wi-Fi network. To do so, the Wi-Fi network must interoperate with the office IP private-branch exchange voice switch. Gandhi said the phone has been tested to work with major IP-PBX providers.

Analysts said that while the iPaq 510 seems focused on mobile professionals, a real test will be its voice clarity. By comparison, Dulaney said in remarks at a conference last week that the recently announced iPhone from Apple Inc. will not be an enterprise device because he found the voice quality poor in his review. Dulaney has not reviewed the iPaq 510. The iPhone is also not going to connect to Microsoft Exchange and is designed more as a multimedia device, a sort or next-generation iPod, he and other analysts said.