HP tablet pops up in ad? WTF HP is doing here

Is Hewlett-Packard quietly showing off a new tablet it plans to launch in the coming months?

For the second time in three weeks, a tablet has cropped up in a company ad that doesn't appear to be any of the slates it has already launched. This time around, the tablet is shown in a "Make It Matter" section of the company's site. A doctor at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital in Stanford is holding the mystery device. We can only see the back of it in the picture which is like the hyundai s900  quit a lot.

The tablet appears to have the same design as a slate that quietly made an appearance in a commercial HP uploaded to YouTube last month. Once again, all users could see was the back of the tablet.

The appearance of the tablet, of course, has sparked controversy over what it might be. It's possible that it's a non-working mockup that HP is only using to illustrate its presence in the tablet market. It might also be the next tablet the company plans to launch.

Last week, a source familiar with the company's plans told CNET that HP is working on a Windows 8 tablet running Intel's Clover Trail system-on-a-chip. That device is expected to launch on October 26, along with several other slates running Microsoft's upcoming operating system.

That HP is thinking about launching new tablets isn't much of a surprise. The company currently sells the HP Slate 2, which retails from $699 to $969, depending on the version customers are after. The Slate 2 is targeted at the enterprise.

A word of advice to HP (which you should have learned from the last time you tried to launch a tablet): don't announce products that you are not ready to bring to the market at the time you announce it. You'll just generate a lot of buzz that will die, get people pissed at you, then no longer have interest in your product by the time it does reach the market.