Microsoft, HP Sort of Back Together, Kind of, for Tablet

It appears they're back on: Hewlett-Packard (News - Alert) will partner with Microsoft to produce a  much-vaunted "iPad killer," aimed at the enterprise business market later this year, according to a senior HP executive.

This comes a couple weeks after Mary-Jo Foley reported that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said “Microsoft and its existing PC partners, including Asus, Dell, Samsung (News - Alert), Toshiba and Sony, will all be fielding Windows 7 slates in the coming months… These slates will be available at a variety of price points and in a variety of form factors.”

Digital Trends notes that HP the company was recently awarded a trademark for “PalmPad."

At the time industry observer Harry McCracken pointed out that “It sounds eerily similar to Ballmer’s CES keynote back in January, during which he… talked up slate PCs, from a different set of manufacturers. The centerpiece of that keynote was HP’s slate,” which went unmentioned this year.

Agence France-Presse reported that HP executive vice president Todd Bradley said they were developing tablet, or slate, computers "using the WebOS operating system of newly acquired Palm, but had not abandoned" Microsoft (News - Alert).

"I think you'll see us with a family of slate products, clearly Microsoft for the enterprise, and a WebOS product," AFP reported Bradley saying at the FortuneBrainstorm Tech conference in Aspen. "Our focus is working with still our largest software partner, Microsoft, to create a tablet, a slate, for the enterprise business."

And yes, it will have Flash: "Speaking at the same Fortune event, Jon Rubinstein, Palm's former chief executive who is now a senior HP vice president, said an HP tablet computer would be able to run Flash, the popular video software from Adobe which Apple (News - Alert) has barred from the iPad," AFP said.