Hewlett Packard, the world's largest manufacturer of desktops, announced Monday that as part of the logical evolution of its webOS business operations, it made organizational changes designed both to accelerate the scale and growth of its existing webOS business as well as to expand and enhance other HP product lines.

To drive the growth of the webOS Global Business Unit, Stephen DeWitt has been named senior vice president and general manager. Under his leadership, HP's Personal Systems Group became the market leader in both commercial and enterprise markets for notebook computers.

Jon Rubinstein starting July 11 is assuming a new role as senior vice president for product innovation for the Personal Systems Group. In this capacity, he will be able to leverage his experience with consumer products to propel innovation across a broad range of areas in the Personal Systems Group, HP said.

In July last year, HP acquired Palm, Inc., for US$1.2 billion.Palm was a smartphone manufacturer that was responsible for products such as the Pre and Pixi as well as the Treo and Centro smartphones. Palm's devices ran on its own operating systems platform, the webOS, which replaced the Palm OS in 2009.

HP had said during the acquisition that Palm's unparalleled webOS platform will enhance HP's ability to participate more aggressively in the fast-growing, highly profitable smartphone and connected mobile device markets. Palm's unique webOS will allow HP to take advantage of features such as true multitasking and always up-to-date information sharing across applications. HP's new division, the Palm global business unit, will be responsible for webOS software development and webOS based hardware products, from a robust smartphone roadmap to future slate PCs and netbooks, HP said.

Since its acquisition of the Palm, however, HP and WebOS have not gained any traction in the mobile computing market.Instead, Apple Inc.'s iPad, which runs on Apple's own iOS, has captured more than 80% of the tablet market. Apple's iPhone and manufacturers running on Google's Android operating system have dominated the smartphone market.

With tablet sales increasing and PC sales softening more phone manufacturers and PC makers are trying the tablet market in order to boost revenues. BlackBerry maker Research In Motion's PlayBook, Apple nemesis Samsung Electronics Inc.'s Galaxy Tab, Netbook pioneer Asus' Eee Pad and Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc.'s Xoom have tried to rival the iPad but these tablets have barely made a dent in the market.

HP released the Wi-Fi version of HP TouchPad at the start of the month and will release the tablet in other territories later in the month. The tablet is priced at US$499.99 and US$599.99 at either 16 GB or 32 GB of internal storage, respectively. HP's 9.7-inch screen Touchpad includes a 1.3MP front webcam, dual-core 1.2-GHz Snapdragon processor, and weighs 740 grams.

The TouchPad will be HP's first devise running on WebOS 3.0. The new webOS enables multi-tasking and uses multi-touch gestures to navigate on the touchscreen. Rubinstein said last month that the WebOS's features and flexibility "will continue to differentiate HP products from the rest of the market for both personal and professional use."

The TouchPad and its WebOS, however, has received mixed reviews.

"The HP TouchPad uses Palm's unique WebOS interface and delivers Adobe Flash-enabled Web browsing, Beats audio enhancement, and impressive compatibility with third-party calendar, messaging, and e-mail services," said Donald Bell at CNET in his review.

Bell concluded, "The TouchPad would have made a great competitor for the original iPad, but its design, features, and speed put it behind today's crop of tablet heavyweights.

Tech Radar gave the TouchPad a 3 out of 5, noting that while multi-tasking has been the core of the WebOS and the new device has a few tricks up its sleeve that separate it from the iPad (support for Adobe Flash, etc), performance of the device is inconsistent and the screen is dim.

A hurdle for the webOS and other non-Apple platforms is the applications. More than available 100,000 applications optimized for the iPad that can be downloaded from the App Store, in addition to the more than 200,000 iPhone apps that can also work for the Apple tablet.

Chris Davies, writing for Slash Gear, notes that Rubenstein, the most prominent carry-over from the Palm acquisition a year ago, Rubenstein has been credited not only for driving development of webOS 3.0 but of the platform's roadmap as a whole.

Davies notes that while early reviews of the TouchPad were mixed, in most cases finding underwhelming hardware, the was little doubt that webOS had the potential for something far more impressive.

"By shifting Rubenstein away from direct control over webOS, however, the fear is that HP's arguably more mundane approach to PCs, notebooks and - dare we mention them - printers might sap some of the magic of the Palm platform," SlashGear's Davis points out.

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