An interesting point I just made to my brother on the phone earlier... I'm not sure if anyone other than Samsung is even selling more non-iPad tablets than HP was prior to this firesale. I doubt Motorola or RIM are selling more than a few thousand each month.

From a financial perspective this move likely makes a lot of sense for HP. It's just a shame they royally fucked the whole thing up from the beginning though. None of the WebOS products had any chance at all. The good news (for HP) is that they may very well pull off this transition the same way IBM did a few years ago. Motorola was saved by Google and it's doubtful RIM will make it until the end of this decade. I give them no more than 5 years unless they dramatically change direction/focus.

I wonder if anyone at Microsoft is laughing about HP's WebOS blunder. In between sobs of the potential loss of Windows licensing opportunity should they exist the PC business...