These past couple of months have been marked by a series of rumors and Internet reports regarding the possibility of a new device developed by Apple, namely the much-anticipated Apple Tablet, or iSlate. While the Cupertino, California-based PC maker is yet to come out with an official announcement on such a device, some PC vendors have already jumped on the new tablet PC segment, which is expected to grow in the upcoming months. On that note, Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer has just unveiled a new touch-enabled slate PC from HP.

During the opening keynote at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas, Steve Ballmer showcased a number of PCs designed to provide consumers with the full Windows 7 experience. After showcasing some of the already available systems on the market, Microsoft's CEO turned to a new category of computer systems, one that included an upcoming slate PC from HP.

Not too generous with the technical specifications of the new device, Steve demoed some of the applications that will be running on the cool-looking device. There are no details on when the said slate PC becomes available, but from the looks of it, it's already capable of running videos and the Kindle software, despite being in prototype stage, at this time. Unfortunately, that's pretty much all we have on HP's take on the market for tablet PCs. According to Ballmer, the product should be on the market later this year.

Considering its form factor, the device might be running on one of Intel's low power Atom processors, or one of the latest AMD low power CPUs. We can't exactly tell what other features will be available with the HP Slate, but if you want to take a look at its design, here's a short video that HP has recently released on YouTube.