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HP to pit "TouchPad" against iPad this summer

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Hewlett-Packard Co unveiled its entrant in the tablet race, announcing a touchscreen device for summer release called the TouchPad to try to steal momentum from Apple Inc's popular iPad.

The 9.7-inch tablet runs on the webOS mobile operating system, which HP acquired last summer in its $1.2 billion purchase of handheld device pioneer Palm.

Pricing and other details for the 1.5-pound tablet, which runs off Qualcomm Inc chips and supports video calling, will be announced later.

The world's largest technology company by revenue also announced new webOS smartphones, the Veer and the Pre3.

WebOS is widely viewed as a strong platform, but HP faces an uphill battle to gain traction in the mobile market. Its products are arriving late to a market already crawling with competition from Apple and devices based on Google Inc's Android.

With the traditional personal computer market maturing and prices continuing to erode, HP -- the world's largest PC maker -- needs credible offerings in the tablet and smartphone space to stay in the conversation.

But its rivals have a huge headstart, and the company will have to spend and market aggressively if it hopes to make any headway. HP, famous for penny-pinching under former CEO Mark Hurd, has made it known it plans to invest under new CEO Leo Apotheker.

IDC expects the smartphone market to rise 25 percent this year, while industry tracker iSuppli predicts the tablet market to more than triple. In contrast, IDC expects less than 10 percent growth in the PC market this year.

HP bought Palm to bring it a differentiated software platform to deploy across a range of its products.

WebOS allows HP to offer devices with fully integrated hardware and software, a soup-to-nuts strategy that has proved wildly successful for Apple.

Todd Bradley, who heads HP's PC division, said the company has over 88,000 retail locations. He estimated the market for connected devices at roughly $160 billion and growing fast.

"Our global reach is unprecedented," he said.

Also on Wednesday, Amazon.com said it plans to launch its free Kindle e-reader app for the TouchPad that will let users buy content, and for a wide spectrum of mobile devices including the iPad and traditional computers.

Shares of Palo Alto, California-based HP were up 0.7 percent at $48.49 at mid-afternoon on Nasdaq.

(Editing by Edwin Chan, Matthew Lewis and Richard Chang)