RIM had a chance to take back the market, but it appears the company will not be successful. Now we look to other competitors to take up the battle against Apple.

[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]The most likely candidate now is webOS. Originally developed by Palm, under the leadership of ex-Apple executive Jon Rubinstein, webOS features a very user-friendly graphical user interface. In a lot of ways, the operating system is the most Apple-like on the market.

webOS is also complimented on its multitasking capabilities, so there is more to it than just a pretty face.

The strength of webOS was one of the leading factors in HP purchasing Palm in April 2010.

PreCentral.net has a detailed look at webOS 3.0, which hasn’t been released yet, and it looks promising. The operating system is about two years old now, so it’s maturing, not brand new. It’s obviously a big advantage to market a mature working OS, instead of trying to convince people to trust a new operating system.

HP said that it will release the webOS-based TouchPad to compete with Apple’s iPad later this year. That will be an interesting entry into the market.

The HP/Palm combination can build hardware and software, but there are still some things missing from the equation. HP doesn’t have the access to audio and video that Apple does, and it certainly does have the integration. Those are problems for HP.

HP also doesn’t have apps, but the company took a big step to fill that shortfall in February. It hired another former Apple executive, Richard Kerris, as its new vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations.

It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out.

It is important to remember though, that while all of these iPad competitors struggle to release their products, Apple continues to develop new iPads. Seems like an uphill battle for everyone.