Hewlett-Packard US computer giant unveiled on Wednesday a TouchPad tablet computer as their entry in a booming market dominated by Apple's iPad.

HP senior vice president Jon Rubinstein unveiled the Touchpad in the San Francisco shoreline within the vicinity of the Golden Gate Bridge, he is computer scientist and electrical engineer who helped created the iPod.

According to Rubinstein as he caressed one on stage TouchPad is more than just a pretty face," "The TouchPad is all about you; how you work, play, and connect with the things you value most."

Palm was bought by HP last year in a $1.2-billion deal in which some analyst believe that this move is to get the platform that could make them a contender in the fast growing competition market of computer tablet and smartphones.

This gadget will be the first webOS software platform based products in the family that Palm began developing for the past five years.

Rubinstein said that "No one has come close to replicating our webOS experience,” he was the chief executive of Palm when it was acquired by HP. The TouchPad tablet is powered with a powerfull Qualcomm processor that is "screaming fast," according to him. It weighs about 1.5 pounds (0.7 kilograms) and showing a 9.7-inch (24.6 centimeter) touch screen display most likely the same weight and screen size as the iPad.

While iPad does not run Flash or have a camera, the TouchPad software is design for easy multi-tasking, features a camera for video calling and supports Adobe Flash software wich mostly used in online video.

HP will allow freedom when it comes to making money from "apps," the analyst added. Thus it likely to win over most application developers because it should be easy to convert software crafted for iPads.

For Sarah Rotman Epps an analyst of Forrester Research the TouchPad has a great hope in beating RIM (BlackBerry maker Research In Motion) and any other Android tablet, but of course not Apple, because consumers will consider the TouchPad, and then get also an iPad." They also predicted that more than 24 million tablets, most of them iPads, will be sold in the United States this year.

A major Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month was overflowed with new tablets, and a Motorola Xoom Honeycomb based model tablet emerged as victorious as it was crowned the best gadget at the show. RIM is set to launch a PlayBook tablet computer, while Google is doing finishing touches their free Android "Honeycomb" software designed specially for that type of devices.

HP's announcement is the latest sign that this is shaping up to be the "year of the tablet wars," according to Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg. He also said, as "Consumers are certainly expecting an iPad 2 and we've seen reports that they are in production." "Thus, this all makes Apple what to do next,"

TouchPad launch teamed up with partners that include digital magazine publishers such as Time Inc. and electronic book giant Amazon. HP plans to use its global resources to back the TouchPad along with an entire webOS "ecosystem" consisting of soon-to-be-released Veer and Pre 3 smartphones and a line of personal computers built on the platform.

HP did not disclose the information on what would be the price and when they debut in Europe and the United States in the middle of this year.