Hewlett-Packard (HP) is weighing options to take its bit of share in the tablet market with two forthcoming tablets.

HP is no newcomer in the tablet PC market as it hogged the limelight last year with the launch of HP Slate 500 PC. The launching of HP Slate 500 then was mainly intended for rich user experience, generally to browse, listen to music, watch videos and enjoy media. The device had all the features of a newly releasing tablet which housed the Windows 7 operating system. It sported a display of 8.9-inch multi-touch touch-screen display with pen support, both front-facing and rear-facing cameras, 64 GB of storage, 2 GB of memory, 1.86 GHz Intel Atom Z540 processor, support for Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, USB 2.0, Bluetooth 3.0, 2-cell (30 WHr) polymer battery lasting 5 hours, a video playback of 1080p, and full hardware accelerated Adobe Flash content and Adobe AIR applications. The Slate was priced at $799.

Now it seems that HP is not done yet, as the company is planning to deliver two new tablets namely 'Topaz' and 'Opal'. Opal is expected to measure 180 x 144 x 13 mm. If this turns out to be true, then the tablet's dimension closely matches the 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab with a dimension of 190.09x120.45x11.98 mm, whereas Topaz with a 241 x 190 x 13 mm (1024 x 768 TFT LCD display) comes close to Apple iPad’s 9.7-inch tablet with a dimension of 243x190x13 mm (1024 x 768 TFT LCD display).

According to analysts from ABI Research, by 2015 the sales volumes of tablet PCs will rise to 57 million units. Also, the introduction of tablet PCs into the market has impacted the sales of notebooks and laptops. Many innovative tablet PCs can be expected to meet the needs of the people soon.

Topaz’s images surfacing in the web shows that the tablet features Palm Pre smartphone’s design. The tablet is expected to feature a front-facing camera, a microUSB port on the bottom, three speakers, 1.2GHz processor and the new webOS operating system. Both tablets would come with WiFi and WiFi+3G (AT&T and Verizon). The new OS platform from HP on tablet will be showcased during the webOS related event to be held on February 9.

Although the announcement is expected to come on February 9, the tablets are expected to arrive some eight months later. This may not work out well for HP as Apple iPad 2 is expected to be announced by April and will be shipped immediately.

A few other rumored features of the tablet from HP include cloud-based storage and the ability to transfer files between a tablet OS and smartphone by just tapping the two devices together, according to analysts from Raymond James & Associates. They said: “We believe that Hewlett-Packard’s tablets will offer unique features that are truly differentiating from competitors. The most notable features include cloud-based storage and wireless transfer of content between webOS devices.”

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