Continuing the wider pondering about what HP's ditching of its webOS business could mean, tech blogger Robert Scoble has given his opinion.

In a blogpost entitled, 'HP's 2,000 webOS patents and how they could reshape everything', his initial focus is the value of what he details as the 2,000-odd patents HP built up over webOS, smartphones and its TouchPad tablet.

Taking Google's Motorola acquisition as a benchmark, he reckons they're worth anything from $1.5 billion to $3 billion.

Men behind the throne

However, as ex-Palm veep Michael Mace previously commented, it's the webOS engineering team that's the real prize.

"The team is still mostly intact (at least this weekend) and has many talented engineers who used to work on Apple's iPhone," Scoble says. In addition, webOS is generally reckoned to have the best user interface.

According to his sources, the team is likely to stay on at HP until October, with takers for both or either team and patents speculated as being Google, Microsoft or Apple.

Or: "What if Facebook bought the team and Google bought the patents?" Scoble questions.

"Now wouldn't THAT be a hoot? Facebook needs more mobile engineers and could use a team of great UI and expert mobile engineers to build tablet and mobile apps."

[source: Scobleizer]