Despite owning the WebOS operating system which many have said was ideal for a tablet, Hewlett-Packard has chosen to launch a tablet running Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system.
The shock move comes as analysts speculated that HP was close to launching a WebOS model in coming weeks.
The new HP tablet was exposed last night at a HP business lunch in the USA.
At the recent CES show in Las Vegas Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer showed off a prototype of a HP tablet running the Windows 7 OS.
The Financial Times reports that In spite of concerns inside HP about the touch-screen functions of Windows 7, the company has committed to delivering both a Windows tablet and a WebOS slate by early 2011.
The device appears to be specifically designed for enterprise applications and not the consumer market with HP executives claiming that their new W7 offering is designed for companies wedded to Windows and the Windows server environment.
“Businesses really wanted to have something in common with the rest of their environment so they could have one [Windows] image to work with,” said Carol Hess-Nickels, HP’s director of business notebook marketing.
HP know that the tablet market is set to be big, earlier this week Apple said that they have already sold to 8m iPads, which were designed mainly for consumers but have been adopted by many businesses as well.
Other large manufacturers have so far shunned Windows 7. One Lenovo executive criticised it as being too optimised for the mouse-and-keyboard approach of a desktop PC.
Executives at US manufacturer Dell declined to promise a Windows-based tablet in interviews on Thursday, saying they were waiting to see progress from Microsoft.
The FT said that HP’s $800 entry has an 8.9-inch screen, falling between the 9.7-inch iPad and 7-inch devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab, due out next month and running Google’s Android operating system.
In the business market, it will compete with the iPad, Cisco’s forthcoming Android-based Cius, and Research in Motion’s announced PlayBook, which runs RIM’s own QNX operating system.
