Hewlett Packard’s Schizoid WebOS Turn Around? No Phone, But Yes to Tablet PC!

Hewlett-Packard chief executive Meg Whitman said Friday that the company plans to manufacture a WebOS tablet in 2013, even as the company winds down the WebOS-based TouchPad tablet. The HP TouchPad was such a disaster that the company canceled it 49 days after it launched. But that was under its previous CEO, Leo Apotheker. Apparently new CEO Meg Whitman wants to take another shot. In what is the latest sideways vertical move for HP on it’s WebOS platform, CEO Meg Whitman and board member Marc Andreessen have told TechCrunch that the HP will definitely manufacture a WebOS tablet. Whitman has said previously that the company is committed to the tablet market. An HP spokesman, asked to confirm the report, said that a WebOS tablet would be made only if the market was “viable”. In August this year HP anounced that it was pulling out of consumer electronics all together, August 19,2011:  Hewlett-Packard is pulling out of it’s consumer PC business, the company chose its Q3 earnings call to drop the bomb. The tech behemoth under Mark Hurd’s watch focused on  splashing out $7 billion to buy Palm, 3COM, and 3PAR, only to fold it all in on itself months later. And if you thought that was the end of the discussion, hold your breath. Whitman and Andreessen are quoted as saying that HP plans a tablet based on Windows 8 for 2012. Ooh, and WebOS is about to become open source. The timing for all this? some time in 2012, or maybe 2013!