HP Sells WebOS Code and Patents to LG, Introduces Android-Powered Slate 7

HP is giving itself one more chance to penetrate the tablet race by introducing the “Slate 7”, a touchpad with Google’s Android OS priced for $169.99.

The specification however is not very special. HP’s Slate 7 uses a 7 inch display with a 1024×600 resolution with a dual 1.6 GHz ARM Cortex A9 SOC, 1GB of memory, 8GB of on-board storage with a Micro SD memory slot option. It uses 802.11 b/g/n/ Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 with a VGA quality front facing camera and a 3 Mega Pixel camera on the rear.

What HP does have is that its stereo speakers use Beats audio processing and the company’s ePrint functionality is also present, but is it something that users would be interested in when looking at the Slate 7 in an already crowded tablet business?

Alberto Torres, HP’s senior vice president of the mobility Global Business Unit, said, “To address the growing interest in tablets among consumers and businesses alike, HP will offer a range of form factors and leverage an array of operating systems. Our new HP Slate on Android represents a compelling entry point for consumer tablets.”

While HP is all set to launch the Slate 7 in the United States by April, HP sells their WebOS patents and code to LG. To those who do not know, HP bought Palm back in 2010 and with it got its WebOS operating system. Unfortunately since then, HP wasn’t able to pull any attention to its “powered by this OS” because of the fierce competition that Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS gave to it and to each other. HP also had to go through some management re-shuffling which lead the OS to be put into cold storage.

Whether or not WebOS gets a new life is something that remains to be seen in the future, but LG announced that it was buying all of the patents and codes as it has plans to use the OS for its line of smart televisions. On the bright side, WebOS won’t be in the middle of the notorious mobile OS battle that has been going on for a long time.

The amount of this deal was not disclosed by either of the parties, but one could speculate that it can be significantly lower than what HP had to pay back in July 2010.

The engineer team of WebOS (or whatever is left of it) will be moving to L.G.’s California lab. Will LG’s plan to integrate WebOS for smart TVs be successful?