Talking in a fireside chat at Qualcomm's Uplinq developers conference, Jon Rubinstein, senior VP, general manager HP (and ex-CEO of Palm) highlighted opportunities for the company's webOS platform, despite its current 'underdog' status in a world of iOS and Android.

"Putting together Palm and HP is really strong. HP has so much capability and scale, and Palm had a lot of technology, but we ran out of runway. We didn't have enough scale," he said.

The potential synergies from the combined outfit are now being seen with the launch of products such as the Pre 3 smartphone and TouchPad tablet, both highly anticipated.

"TouchPad will be out "really soon", Rubinstein said, avoiding questions of when and at what cost, saying "We try to make high quality devices at competitive prices."

He also promised TouchPad would receive "fairly substantial consumer marketing."

More than physical

Aside from specific hardware, he was keen to stress the overall power of webOS as a platform.

"It's not about a single device. It's about how multiple devices work together and with the cloud," he explained.

"WebOS is on phones, will be in tablets and running on top of PCs. HP sells a lot of PCs and printers."

Attracting content makers

The hope is that the scale of HP will encourage developers to make games and apps for webOS.

"Yesterday we were the underdog, but I think our story [on apps] will become quite strong," Rubinstein argued.

"We've been doing aggressive outreach with developers, and between the use of webOS on tablets and PCs, I think the market opportunities will expand very quickly."

Success in the cloud

And it's this wider take on the market that Rubinstein thinks plays to HP and webOS' strengths.

"We will see a lot of devices [tablets] fail. It's got to be more about the device itself. You've got to understand the ecosystem," he said.

WebOS has been designed from the ground up with the expectation that content and data will be pulled from the cloud.

"We're not a walled garden in terms of syngeries. You can keep your data where you want so you can use the best-in-class services in the cloud with our devices," Rubinstein explained.

Special friends

Interestingly, he also said HP wouldn't rule out licensing the OS to other companies, although not in an Android manner.

"Our model is not to be in the licensing business. There is great strength in being able to deliver a unified experience to the customer, but we are more than willing to partner with one or two special companies. But we're not interested in the general licensing business."

And what's a special company? "One that will be bring something new to the ecosystem."