As we recently reported, HP has decided to ditch its phones and tablets using the webOS operating system. Though the system received rave reviews, and many stood by it, HP failed to attract the developers necessary to build an ecosystem of apps. Sales were disappointing; Best Buy couldn't even move 10% of its inventory. HP was losing money hand over fist, as Technology Review's Erica Naone wrote, "the company's corporate investments category, which includes webOS, earned $266 million in revenue this quarter—but lost $332 million."

So the company did what you do in such a situation. It announced a fire sale. It slashed the price of its TouchPad, the webOS tablet, to $99, a discount of about $250. You can't get a Kindle that cheap, let alone a tablet.

Then, something amazing happened: a sudden wave of interest in webOS as had never before been manifested. The longed-for sales flowed like water from a burst dam. According to some reports, 350,000 TouchPads sold over the weekend alone. At one California Best Buy, 140 tablets went in an hour. I frantically searched about for one myself (who wouldn't, at that price), but was already too late.

The event has put HP in a funny position. It had to confess to investors that its foray into tablets was a failure, but as a direct result of that confession and the accompanying price reduction, the tablet momentarily had its fifteen minutes of fame (almost literally). For a brief time, HP had its iPad moment, when all eyes were on its product, and demand overwhelmed supply.

What lessons are to be drawn here, though? Is there a potential demand for webOS products that HP just needs to find the right price point to unleash? Or is this simply another lesson in the rather obvious fact that slashing prices is an effective way of liquidating inventory?

HP has used language that suggests that they feel the Great Fire Sale of 2011 reflects more than mere microeconomics at work, and that it is a vote of confidence in the platform (which HP still intends to license, perhaps as an OS for smart refrigerators, among other things). People who ordered an HP TouchPad online on August 20 or 21 received a message from HP saying that the "unprecedented orders" indicated a "clear confirmation to HP there is huge interest in building a webOS community." And indicating that the hardware component hadn't been jilted entirely just yet, webOS chief Stephen DeWitt reportedly said the company plans to put webOS on PCs and printers, and that further updates are in store for the Veer smartphone and the TouchPad.

It's too early to say just what the Great HP Fire Sale of 2011 really means. Like the earthquake that shook much of the East Coast this week, it may be, in hindsight, a confusing event that some felt while others missed, and that didn't have any particularly long term implications. What it seems to indicate, though, is that there are strong potential forces at work in a second-tier tablet market—the market full of those looking for the tablet experience without shelling out for an iPad. HP lost this race. But a dark horse candidate might emerge soon, and we're inclined to side with those who think that when an Amazon tablet debuts, some of the consumer behavior we saw last week briefly around the HP tablet, might replicate itself around a Jeff Bezos offering.

If you've even dipped a toe into the tech blogosphere of late, you've heard the rumors about an impending Amazon Kindle tablet--or even a pair of them. The blog Boy Genius Report, which has a decent track record as a source for accurate leaks, recently reported that Amazon would be putting out not one but two tablets by the end of this year, code named "Coyote" (a lower-end model) and "Hollywood" (a more deluxe version). Many an observer has heaped speculation upon speculation, since. But what I want to focus on here is one question: what kind of influence does the legacy of the Kindle—that plain-old e-reading device—have on its heir apparent, the Kindle tablet?

Consider, first, the iPad—the reigning tablet king that Jeff Bezos's devices will be going after. There was a certain logical progression from the iPhone to the iPad. An iPhone does everything; it's essentially a little computer. You navigate the streets of your city with it, you send emails on it, you watch YouTube on it, you listen to music with it, you use it surf the Web; it is as much a portal to the world as your laptop or desktop device. Its only problem? It has a small screen. When the iPad debuted, it was the manifestation of the preexisting desires of the iPhone owner: an all-capable, Internet accessible device with, at last, a screen to match its power.

The progression from Kindle to Kindle tablet, however, is less direct. The Kindle isn't a computer, in the way that an iPhone is; it's merely a reader. It's an excellent, wildly successful reader, but those who use the device are not necessarily looking to graduate to a tablet. Indeed, the first reaction from many was to worry if a Kindle tablet might somehow spell the end of the plain-old Kindle. Jeff Bezos told Consumer Reports recently, by way of reassurance, that "we will always be very mindful that we will want a dedicated reading device."

The lesson of the iPad and the Kindle tablet is this: that product history matters. The iPod was the gateway gadget for the iPhone, which in turn lit the way to the iPad. But the Kindle has become synonymous with a quiet, contemplative experience. The Kindle tablets, by contrast, will be multimedia extravaganzas much like the iPad; they're rumored to use cutting edge Fringe Field Switching technology on its screen, the better to dazzle you with.

Many hope that the force of the Kindle brand—now a household name—will be enough to make the Amazon tablet the iPad's first serious challenger. But it may be that very brand image that hinders its adoption, at least among those who have welcomed the original Kindle as the one gadget out there that offers a solace from the endless razzle-dazzle of the multimedia-rich Web.

A pair of new tablets have been announced, and another one nears a U.S. launch date, expanding the field of competition against the iPad.

Engadget notes that Gigabyte's S1080 tablet is likely to come to a store near you soon. The FCC recently came across one Stateside and cracked it open for a look under the hood. The Windows 7 slate appeared in Taiwan not long ago, so its specs are no secret. It has a dual core Atom N550 processor, a 10.1-inch touchscreen with 1024x600 resolution. It has a curiously old-school twist to it: even though it has a touchscreen, there are also tactile mouse buttons and an optical mouse that can be operated by your thumbs. There's a good-sized hard drive--320 GB--an SD card reader, Ethernet port, and other features outlined in a recent press release. The announcement had it priced at about $699, which strikes many observers as rather steep. Engadget snarkily calls it "the slate you never asked for."

Maybe you'll be more likely to ask for Sony's forthcoming offerings. The other day it announced a pair of tablets, the S1 and the S2 ($599 and $699 respectively, according to one source). We don't know a ton about these tablets yet, though CrunchGear rounds up some nice photos here. They'll run on Honeycomb, and will employ Sony's Qriocity media-streaming suite, helping feed your appetite for online music, games, books, and video. The S1 has a 9.4-inch screen and employs Tegra 2 ("the world's first mobile superchip," if you ask its maker) inside, which ought to help out with HD video playback. Other basics are in tow: IR port for AV control and DLNA support, for example.

We're most intrigued, though, by the S2. Instead of having one big screen, it has two little ones (5.5 inches each). The whole thing appears to clasp together like a little snap-purse. How could the screens be used? Either in conjunction, as one large screen that happens to spill across two panels, or separately--video on one screen and a remote control on the other, or an email inbox up top and a virtual keyboard on the bottom. That, to us, seems like an actual tablet innovation, and we look forward to seeing these Sony devices hit the market sometime this fall.