HP, fresh from its announcement that it will be buying mobile phone maker Palm, has already hinted that it plans to bring the mobile phone maker's operating system, webOS, to other devices.

"Between smartphones, slates and potentially netbooks [it] represents an enormous opportunity to our customers", Todd Bradley - Hewlett-Packard - EVP, Personal Systems Group said in the companies conference call following the news of the announced buyout.

The news could mean see tablet devices like the HP Slate move towards using webOS rather than a Microsoft powered solution.

Bradley, who ran Palm before joining HP, used the conference call to say that a number of decisions where still to be made about how the two companies would merger and what products would be launched next, however HP intended "to invest heavily in product development and go to market to drive this business aggressively".

As to the timeline in which to evolve webOS to run on HP hardware and specifically on different form factors with larger screens, Bradley said that the company needs to get the "transaction closed before we get to talking about timelines".

The news come as as HP and Palm announced on Wednesday that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase Palm.

The transaction, which has been approved by the HP and Palm boards of directors will catapult HP back into the smartphone business and giving it a chance to relive the heady days of the Compaq range of PDA devices.