Michael Rizkalla, the former senior director of webOS application development at HP, is the latest executive that left the company ever since employment in its consumer units became unstable.

“The departure of Rizkalla highlights the bigger problem for HP,” writes GigaOm.  ‘Even as it debates the future of webOS, the fact that it’s potentially on the chopping block has to be sending plenty of signals to the entire team.”

Rizkalla left after Hewlett-Packard emailed 500 pink slips to workers at its San Diego unit, later confirmed to be the webOS division. It also follows the somewhat dramatic resignation of Phil McKinney, vice president and chief technology officer of HP’s Personal Systems Group back in November.

HP has plans to get rid of webOS altogether, though it seems the company is reluctant to scrap its $1+ billion dollar investment in Palm.  According to the company,

“…although HP is winding down the device operations of our webOS division by October 31, 2011, we will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software.”

By opportunity, the electronics giant means it hopes to sell the division to either Amazon or a number of other companies that have been speculated to show interest in webOS. For the time being, however, HP is trying to clear its inventory by offering impressive deals to potential customers.

It’s notable that while Hewlett Packard is trying to maximize the value of its partially abandoned Palm investment, the manufacturer has not abandoned the tablet market all together. The HP Slate 2 Tablet PC (the successor of the Slate) is a $700 Windows Phone 7-powered device that weighs 1.5 pounds and includes  an Intel Atom Z670 processor with mSATA SSM  and an 8-inch screen.