HP announced that it has completed a $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm, the smartphone maker. The deal is set to revive Palm's innovative WebOS mobile platform, in conjunction with the release of new smartphones, netbooks and a tablet .

In a press release, HP said that Former Palm CEO and Chairman Jon Rubinstein will now report to Todd Bradley, who heads HP's Personal Systems team. As the deal was finalized, HP cleared up questions surfaced whether Palm's latest WebOS-powered smartphones would live on. ?"Palm will be responsible for WebOS software development and WebOS-based hardware products from a robust smartphone roadmap to future slate PCs and netbooks." ??The company did not elaborate on details.

However, the mention of "slate" PCs in the press release brings to mind the HP Slate. The PC is a Windows 7-based tablet that was rumored to be discontinued. There have been speculation that HP has stopped production of the Slate, which is Windows-based, in favor of a tablet powered by the WebOS platform.??At this point, nothing seems certain about the company's next moves. In a separate statement, HP says that it is in "customer evaluations now and will make a determination soon on the next steps."