HP Confirms Rumors of Tablet Powered by WebOS... Sooner not Later

I've been thinking more and more lately about replacing my Palm Pre smartphone with something better. I had been a huge Palm fan back in the day and, like someone in an abusive relationship, had decided to give them "one more chance" in the summer of 2009.

The Palm Pre really has never lived up to the hype with which it was launched. Its only saving grace was the fact that it could multi-task. However, the more I used my iPod Touch or iPad, the weaknesses of the Pre became more and more apparent.

When HP purchased Palm earlier this year, I thought that might be a good thing for the WebOS line in general, but figured that the Pre was too old and too "yesterday" to receive much of a boost from new ownership.

So, as I consider my options for my next Sprint smartphone, we can at least celebrate the fact that HP will indeed continue to use some type of WebOS in the future. That's because of the fact that HP has announced that a tablet device running WebOS will appear in the near future.

HP's Tom Bradley has announced to investors the following: “You’ll see us with a Microsoft product out in the near future and a webOS-based product in early 2011.”