With HP purchasing Palm, Inc., they’ve announced dropping development for a Microsoft Slate PC device in favor of a WebOS-Powered tablet. This sounds great to me, but in my opinion the WebOS would need to be upgraded substantially to complete with the Apple iPad and other future tablet devices. Currently, the WebOS seems to be geared towards smaller screen devices, and it would need to be updated to handle larger screens.
Also, WebOS apps are primarily written in an interpreted Javascript language, which isn’t as fast as compiled Java or C++ code. Even though the Javascript Engine might be fast on a device, I don’t believe they can make it as fast as true compiled code. Palm has recently introduced a PDK which allows for creating C++ compiled libraries that can be access from a Javascript front-end app, but this PDK is currently in beta and still being developed.
If Palm can accelerate their update of the WebOS SDK and PDK then they may have a chance of capturing a good portion of the tablet market. That is, if developers decide to create app for their platform that can compete with Apple’s.
Palm WebOS Ramblings 