Currently, consumers in America can waltz into their nearest Sprint store and pick up a Samsung Galaxy Tab for use on the CDMA network. But it only works on EVDO, not Sprint’s speedier WiMAX network. According to Sprint President of Business Markets Paget Alves in Forbes, they’ll be rectifying that in 2011, with the launch of an unspecified 4G-capable tablet.

The big unknown is what exactly this tablet (or tablets?) will run as an operating system, a specific Alves was mum on. He did at least admit that Sprint will soon have tablets running different operating systems than the Android-powered Tab. There are a number of options, including BlackBerry’s upcoming playbook, any number of Windows-powered tablets, but oh, could it be, an HP webOS-powered PalmPad? Don’t get your hopes up, because we have no way of reading any further into Alves’ words: there are several options, of which webOS is only one. Then again, we’d like to think that HP is going to go all Samsung here and make their webOS tablet available on all carriers. Wouldn’t that be something?

Source: Forbes; Via: Engadget; Thanks to everyone for the tips!

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HP Senior Vice President and Palm Global Business Unit General Manager Jon Rubinstein, formerly CEO of the independent Palm, Inc. (let’s see all that on a business card) sat down with the Wall Street Journal’s Kara Swisher for a chat about Palm at the Dive Into Mobile conference in San Francisco. The discussion was wide-ranging, touching on where Palm went wrong, where Palm is going, and how things work with the new HP overlords.

The discussion started with Swisher touching back on something that struck us as surprising from the last time she and Rubinstein were on stage: the then Palm CEO had not even touched an iPhone. Apparently that has since changed, with Rubinstein noting that many Palm employees use iPhones, and the iPhone is reviewed by their competitive analysis groups. But yes, he has now touched and used an iPhone. It’s not something that ever became his primary device, as he doesn’t “want to be tainted by another experience. I want to come at this with a fresh perspective and I think what we’re seeing now in this industry is that everyone is copying the iPhone.”

But would having used an iPhone saved Palm? We doubt it. In fact, Rubinstein admitted that though webOS and the Pre were great products, “market moved too fast and when we looked forward we saw a very clear way to where we could get the company to profitability, but we didn’t see a way to get it to scale.”

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If HP is betting big on webOS, chances are they’re going to be placing some very large orders for their next generation devices. If sketchy record owner DigiTimes is to be believed, HP and Palm are doing just that with the expected webOS tablet for next year. Apparently Inventec is anticipated to land the contract to build the device (contrary to earlier rumors pointing at Foxconn), with an order of 6-7 million units. Inventec is also the builder of Barnes & Noble’s Android-powered Nook Color, of which they’re expecting to ship over one million by year’s end.

Is this plausible? Sure, but we’re going to take this one with prodigious salt. We want to believe that HP expects they’ll be able to sell several million PalmPads in the first year of its life (that’s assuming that it even ships early in the year), but we still have yet to even see the device. Either way, the rumors are swirling that the device is coming, hopefully it won’t be too long before it’s actually formally announced.

Source: DigiTimes; Via: Electronista; Thanks to Zen00 for the tip!

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While the Palm Pre 2 might be eliciting less-than-impressed responses from Palm fans, we can’t help but wonder what Palm might come out with next. It’s all but assumed that the Pre 2 was the phone Palm had in the pipeline and that it was supposed to be out several months ago, but what’s not all that clear is what’s due next.

According to Chinese trade paper CENS.com’s "industry sources," Foxconn Technology and Compal Communications have landed contracts with Palm to produces several new devices. Foxconn is said to have secured the contract for four or five devices, including the PalmPad, while Compal has picked up the contract for one more device. Additionally, all five (or six) devices are due for production and presumably sale in 2011.

If this is true, consider our minds scrambled. That leaves us wondering just what devices we could see if up to six different form factors hit the shelves next year. There’s obviously the tablet, but what else there might be is unclear. Options include portrait and landscape sliders, a keyboard-less slate device, the candy bar Pixi form factor, and… something else to make six? Here’s hoping Palm can take some inspiration from our amazingly talented members.

HP has made it clear that they’re intending to invest major dollars into making Palm a successful company, and when you spend $1.2 billion on something, you generally want to make sure you get your money’s worth. Multiple devices hitting the market in the span of a year is one way to get attention, and hopefully rake in some profits.

We’re also taking some comfort from CENS.com’s use of Palm as the contracting company, not HP. It’s a comforting notion that these would be Palm handsets (or tablets (or toasters)) and not HP branded, calming our fears of the Palm brand fading away anytime soon.

Source: CENS.com; Via: Telcompaper; Thanks to everybody that sent this in!

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HP has already let loose the word that they’d be releasing a webOS-based tablet in 2011, but in todays’ Analyst Meeting, HP EVP Todd Bradley was the first HP employee to call it the PalmPad, a trademark HP filed for in July:

We’ve already announced the expansion of our future product portfolio well beyond smartphones. We’ll have a webOS-powered PalmPad that will be set for release early in 2011.

While it’s always possible that Bradley is simply a very avid PreCentral reader and so knows that PalmPad is one of the leading rumored names for the webOS tablet, we’re thinking that until further notice, ‘PalmPad’ is the leading contender for what HP will be calling the webOS Slate/Tablet.

via HP Data Central

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HP has clearly decided to go ahead and release plenty of the products they’d been developing before purchasing Palm. We’ve just seen that crazy Android Printer/Tablet combo and now their Windows 7-based Slate has hit YouTube. It looks to run decently fast and though the design of the product isn’t exactly awe-inspiring, it’s not like there’s a ton of room for designed to play with in this form factor.

The Slate is rumored to be released this fall (or possibly even this October), though HP has made it very clear that the device is focused on Enterprise users, not general consumers. We’ll see if that distinction holds up once HP and Palm get around to releasing their webOS tablet – what few rumors we have seem to indicate that HP is excited enough to be pushing hard on development for that product. Of course the only official word we have – from HP’s quarterly financial call – still pegs release of the webOS tablet / PalmPad for ‘early 2011.’

Video after the break!

Source: BGR; Thanks to everybody who sent this in!

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Sprint Pre users are the founding fathers of the great webOS community. Yet they have been left out in the cold while everyone else (i.e. Verizon, AT&T, and O2) has gotten a better version their beloved hardware. As they watch in envy as everyone else can open more than a couple cards without getting a too many cards error, they have been chomping at the bit for any morsel of news; something, anything about new hardware. Sales reps in the stores are notably forthcoming with the information. The trouble is the news they dish is like snowflakes; no two are ever alike. The release dates they provide range from never to just around the corner to a year from now.

PreCentral Forum member Idudiaz reported that a "high level Sprint person" told him a new phone would be introduced the first or second week of September. Obviously, that hasn’t quite panned out, but we’ll give him an extension to the end of the month. An HP marketing person allegedly told teejay69 that the Windows 7-running Slate would be out very soon, with the Palm tablet following just a couple weeks after that. Moderator Blaize said her trusted Sprint rep told her the release date will be the beginning of the new year, meshing with what we’ve heard out of HP. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Socoot1 was told that Sprint rejected the new Palm phone. And Mikeydcomment said a Sprint rep recently told him not to expect any new Palm devices on Sprint until third quarter 2011 at the earliest, and probably not until fourth quarter.

These are just a smattering of the rumors we have heard about Palm devices, mostly from Sprint reps. There are also reports of Verizon mall kiosk and big box retail reps telling customers all manner of blatant misinformation to sway them toward a Droid, including DoobieDoo who was told that Palm did not exist anymore and there would be no updates for the Pre.

Just how credible this information is really depends on a lot of things. How much inside information is a retail sales rep privy to? Probably not much. We all know salesmen will say whatever they feel is necessary to get you to buy what they want you to buy (yes, there are plenty of good and honest salespeople out there – but it only takes one bad apple). However, people do like to brag when they have special access to insider information that everyone wants. It’s human nature. So it is always possible that some of this information borders on accurate. The only safe bet is to believe none of it and be pleasantly surprised when the truth finally comes from Palm.

We do know for a fact that there is some fantastic hardware coming our way thanks to Rahul Sood. While it would help us make some buying decisions if we knew an approximate date, for the time being there’s so little clarity in the webOS rumor space that Palm newness could be later than most of us would like.

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Prior to snapping up Palm, HP was very intently studying the tablet space. It was obvious that a Windows 7 tablet was in the cards (Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed one off at CES), but whether they were working on something else wasn’t clear. Rumors and leaks and blurry cam photos soon surfaced of an Android-powered tablet and printer combo code-named the Zeus (or Zeen (or c510)).

HP’s finally gotten around to announcing this fantastical mystery device, and it’s called the HP Photosmart eStation AiO. AiO stands for all-in-one (as in printer/fax/scanner/copier), but the tablet is obviously the interesting part of this combination: it runs Android 2.1, but it’s nowhere near the typical Android experience. Instead this sucker’s been heavily skinned and locked down with the help of Yahoo (yes, Yahoo tinkering with Google’s OS on HP’s printer), leaving users with a host of Yahoo widgets and a handful of HP ePrint apps, plus email and browser and a Nook eReader app.

This ain’t no Google experience, but signs right now indicate that it’s not what we should expect from webOS and Palm under HP. Despite its Android roots, the eStation AiO is a dedicated device. It’s not a tablet computer by any means: it’s more a super-advanced control interface for a printer with some on-the-go on the side. Which is kind of, uh, interesting? Let’s just hope that this isn’t what HP has in mind for their webOS printer idea too.

Source: Engadget; Thanks to everybody that sent this in!

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We’re waiting with baited breath for any news from Palm, and it seems we may have it. An email supposedly sent to developers (we have not been able to independently corroborate) from HP’s Peter Helm (now part of the Palm Developer Relations team) mentioned “tablet-style” devices. Here’s the excerpt published by Engadget:

“Now that we are officially part of HP, we are going full speed ahead with our applications initiative. Our proprietary operating system, webOS, is now the OS that will be used in HP’s mobile devices. This includes mobile handsets as well as tablet-style devices similar to the iPad. We will accordingly leverage Palm’s ability to innovate and the scale of HP’s vast install base and distribution network previously unavailable to us.”

Ignoring the strange wording here and there, it’s pretty clear what Palm and HP have in mind. But the iPad has set a very high bar, and despite being the most “tablet ready” mobile OS out there (our not so humble opinion), there are still significant hurdles facing webOS to properly make the jump from handheld smartphone to tablet. Then again, HP did say early 2011 for the webOS tablet, so maybe they’ve got those hurdles figured.

Source: Engadget; Thanks to everybody that sent this in!

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We here in Republic of webOS are looking with envy at our frienemies in Applestan and Androidia. It’s not their operating systems that are the object of our desire, though there are some features we’d like to copy. No, it’s the tablets that have drawn our eye. While Applestans may only have the iPad to play with, that certainly hasn’t stopped the 10-inch tablet from being a success.

Meanwhile, Androidians have to cope with a new tablet a week, from the 5-inch Dell Streak to the 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab to the just-announced ten inches of Toshiba Folio 100 (really, guys, Folio?). All this tablety fun has us longing for our own big screen webOS action here in the Republic, and thankfully HP has at least let us know that we can expect to see that mythical webOS tablet early in 2011.

Next year is still a ways off and while we’re sure it’ll be here before we know it, there’s still the question of how will the PalmPad/Hurricane/whatever look when it arrives. So we are asking you, of citizens of the Republic of webOS: what size screen do you want on your webOS tablet?

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