Now that HP has bought Palm, the company is said by insiders to be working on expanding the scope of webOS beyond the Palm Pre and into the emerging tablet space that Apple’s been trying to tackle. The slate-based design is said to be replacing the Windows 7 HP Slate and has the codename of Hurricane. The slate-based tablet would add another form factor beyond the Treo-esque Palm Pixi Plus and the slider Pre. We’ll have to see if HP would be brazen enough to release a tablet-based smartphone with a software keyboard and no sliding mechanism to follow up with a slate tablet.

While Microsoft is targeting smartphones with its Windows Phone 7 OS at this point, an attractive webOS tablet could give the HP-infused Palm a fighting chance against Apple’s iPad and may invigorate some life into Palm’s smartphone hardware.

(via: PreCentral and the Examiner)