A bleeding, beaten, crushed HP today waved the white flag at Apple today, abandoning its fledgling moves into the tablet market.

Folks, if we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a million times.

There is only one tablet that matters – Apple iPad.

And smart, thinking people including yours truly are buying only the iPad.

The rest is junk and struggling to survive despite hefty discounts.

Today, HP pulled the plug on the TouchPad tablet less than two months after it launched.

HP started selling the TouchPad July 1 in the U.S. and soon after in Europe and Canada.

TouchPad Killed in 49 Days

By all accounts, the TouchPad met with an unenthusiastic reception from consumers despite a price cut of $100.

The 16GB TouchPad, which debuted at $499, has no takers today for $399 or less.

There are few applications for the TouchPad compared to over 90,000 dedicated apps for the iPad (in addition, several hundred thousand iPhone apps also work on the iPad).

But lack of applications is only part of the reason why the TouchPad failed.

For any tablet vendor to now succeed, it must offer a feature-set superior to the iPad at a significantly lower price. And that’s an impossibility for any of Apple rivals.

The writing is on the wall for Samsung, Motorola, Acer, Asus and other Android-based tablet vendors that are facing an uphill battle.

HP made no secret today that the TouchPad was a dud:

HP will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. The devices have not met internal milestones and financial targets. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.

End of webOS – $1.2b Flushed Away

TouchPad is based on the webOS that HP got with the $1.2 billion Palm acquisition in April 2010.

Along with the TouchPad, HP is also jettisoning the webOS phones.

Related Stories:
Non-iPad Tablets Should Roll Over & Die
It’s iPad or No Pad, Say Consumers

  iPad, TouchPad