HP CEO Meg Whitman has announced that in the next two weeks the company will decide what to do with webOS.

She also, curiously, said that HP needs “another operating system”, which begs the question: Why? HP already has Windows, Linux, and its own semi-proprietary version of Unix. That would seem sufficient. Hints are being dropped that webOS will become an embedded OS in HP printers going forward – whether that means HP office printers or HP’s commercial digital printing presses is unspecified. If HP has a real business case for using webOS rather than Linux for this, then fine, but it sounds like HP groping for excuses to keep webOS alive and not finding much.

One thing Whitman should not consider is a revival of HP’s webOS consumer tablets. The problem HP and the other PC/laptop makers have in this arena is that tablets are a very different business model than desktops and laptops. Tablets are not part of the hardware market at all. Rather they are extensions of the Web services market designed to capture consumers.

For instance, while Apple presumably makes a profit on its high-end $500 iPad, the real money is in the Apple App and iTunes stores and, eventually, in its new iCloud service. iPads aren’t used primarily as stand-alone devices like laptops. They are cloud service front-ends for consuming games and other apps and e-media such as e-books, e-magazines, digital music, and video. iPad users can only get those from one source, Apple. And while most of those products and services are created by third parties, Apple gets a cut in every sale. Android consumer tablets follow the same model, to the point that Amazon appears to be selling the Kindle Fire for a loss to capture customers.

The same is true in the business market as the Cius, Cisco’s Android tablet, makes clear. Cisco clearly positions the Cius as a front-end to consume business services created with Cisco technologies and delivered over Cisco networks.

The problem for HP is that it has no cloud services to sell to consumers along. Creating those services would require a huge investment, with no guarantee that it would succeed against Apple and the Android coalition. And selling those tablets for direct profits on the laptop business model would price them at the top of the market while giving users little to do with them. WebOS sold like hot cakes at $100. It will not sell at $500.

Business tablets are a better market for HP, although again it lacks the network-based services such as Cisco’s virtual meeting system, to link them to. But in this market Windows makes much more sense than webOS. HP has a real opportunity there to get a jump on its competition and turn the Slate tablet into the iPad of the business marketplace, but only if it makes a major marketing commitment to accomplishing that.

So what should HP do with webOS? The business case behind HP’s purchase of Palm, by then a low-end consumer smartphone vendor, was never clear. If HP really does need another OS and webOS fits that bill, then fine, although no one seems to have any idea of what Whitman meant by that comment, if indeed it wasn’t a mistranslation. But smartphones and consumer tablets are not HP’s market. The company would be much wiser to cut its losses in Palm, sell it if it can, and refocus that investment into developing the Slate as a front-end to HP’s business computer systems and marketing it heavily into its installed base.