At CES, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer proudly went on stage with the HP Slate, and it was considered to be the first real competition to the iPad. Even the pricing details that came out sounded good, and just as the industry started to speculate the launch date for the Windows 7 Slate, HP acquired Palm! Its no-brainer that the most valuable asset of Palm is its software i.e. the WebOS. Enough for speculations of the Windows Slate being canned to go around the town. HP VP Phil McKinney clarified that the Slate is a “real product” and would launch sometime in 2010. Now adding a little twist to this tale Digitimes quotes Monty Wong, vice president of personal computing systems group at HP Taiwan confirmed a WebOS based tablet before October.
Now that leaves us with two HP tablets coming up with different operating systems. Given the long standing relationship between Microsoft and HP, it would be a difficult situation for HP to ditch Windows 7. And perhaps here we also heard them saying that the WebOS won’t make it to netbooks or smartbooks but just smartphones and tablets.
Given the time frame in which Monty Wong has claimed a WebOS to be coming up, I am pretty sure that Palm was working on this thing and adding HP’s resources to it makes the rollout happen faster. The entire best Palm, we live to see your innovation in HP now
