Many expected to see Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) target its upcoming Slate tablet computer, which will run Windows 7, to the consumer market, but it looks like the company plans to go after enterprise customers instead. While there's been no official announcement, an HP executive said at a conference last week that the tablet would be launched for the enterprise this fall, reports Nilay Patel at Engadget.

Some in the IT corner of the blogosphere see the Slate's enterprise focus as part of a larger strategy to become more like Apple in the way products are made and marketed.  

"From what we're hearing, HP wants to create a seamless experience for all of their hardware. That's PCs to notebooks to netbooks to tablets to mobile phones to printers," writes MC Siegler at TechCrunch. "And they want to do so with a much more controlled product line than they've previously had. They want to move towards more premium products, ones with higher margins."

HP is not expected to drop Windows in the foreseeable future, though. For the desktop, the company is rumored to be trying to develop software to sync webOS for operating on Windows, Siegler writes.

For more:
- see Nilay Patel's post at Engadget
- see MC Siegler's post at TechCrunch

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