HP plans to release a webOS tablet in 2013 despite killing the TouchPad

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.

In what is the latest bizarre turn for HP's WebOS and related tablet business, it's reported that Whitman and board member Marc Andreessen told TechCrunch that the company would manufacture a WebOS tablet perhaps in 2012, and definitely in 2013.

An HP spokesman, asked to conform the report, said that a WebOS tablet would be made only if the market was "viable". He said that he preferred to focus on the decision to release WebOS as open source, which will give it an immortality that it otherwise might not have.

However, the schizophrenia on HP's WebOS operating system and tablet hardware continues, as HP reportedly plans one last fire sale for the tablet on Sunday, in what has become a long and winding road. Months after the TouchPad was launched in March using HP's WebOS operating system, HP decided to kill it in August, as part of a decision to kill the WebOS hardware business after sales failed to meet expectations. But after HP discounted the TouchPad to $99, sales began to take off, even prompting HP to make another batch.

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