About the only thing missing from the tech industry this week was a sudden and mysterious case of amnesia. If only Steve Ballmer were so lucky.

One day after the news that Microsoft has mothballed its Courier tablet project, TechCrunch this morning quotes an anonymous "source who's been briefed on the matter" saying that Hewlett-Packard has killed the highly hyped Windows 7 slate that caused the big stir at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year.

No official word yet from HP or Microsoft, and based on our own sniffing around this morning, it's worth treating this one with a dose of skepticism until we get official confirmation. That said, there's no question that Microsoft finds itself in an awkward spot as the industry rushes to compete with the iPad in the emerging niche between smart phones and traditional computers.

"Microsoft has been caught out of position as this 'tweener' market gets established," said tech analyst Roger Kay of Endpoint Technologies Associates, via phone this morning. "Its two candidates don’t quite fit the category."

On one side, Windows 7 is in some ways too beefy and too expensive, Kay explained. It’s a premium-priced OS with a lot of features, relatively heavyweight and expensive, and its proportion of the bill of materials is high for these in-between devices. That makes it very difficult to shoehorn Windows 7 into these devices. On the other side, Windows Mobile is caught at a very bad point in its development because of the impending jump from Windows Mobile 6.5 to Windows Phone 7. That's a necessary technological refresh for Microsoft, but one that will cause disruption in the developer community.

That leaves a big opening for competitors to target the market for slate-style tablet devices. HP's pending acquisition of Palm has been fueling speculation that the computer maker could use Palm's WebOS for tablets. Google's allegedly patent-infringing Android operating system is also emerging as a credible alternative there. (And on TVs, too, apparently?)

And of course, Apple is all over this one, with the iPad having first-mover advantage.

Then again, that depends on how you define "first mover." The irony of this whole thing is that Microsoft was way out ahead of this one -- maybe even too far out ahead -- launching its Tablet PC initiative in the early part of the last decade. By all appearances, the company is now on its heels as the market appears ready to become a reality.

But how will we watch video on these new devices? On that topic, the biggest tech industry subplot of the week has been the debate over the future of Adobe Flash, fueled by Steve Jobs' open letter on the subject, explaining why his company isn't supporting the ubiquitous technology.

The Apple CEO's concluding zinger: "Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind."

In a new blog post of his own, Internet Explorer GM Dean Hachamovitch outlines Microsoft's position on the topic, siding with Apple by stating that the Redmond company believes HTML5 is the "future of the web." (Also see earlier post on IE9.)

Then again, the IE GM doesn't go quite as far as Jobs in declaring Flash dead -- at least not yet.

"Today, video on the web is predominantly Flash-based," Hachamovitch writes. "While video may be available in other formats, the ease of accessing video using just a browser on a particular website without using Flash is a challenge for typical consumers. Flash does have some issues, particularly around reliability, security, and performance. We work closely with engineers at Adobe, sharing information about the issues we know of in ongoing technical discussions. Despite these issues, Flash remains an important part of delivering a good consumer experience on today’s web."

What about Microsoft Silverlight? Whether or not this is ultimately meaningful, it's worth noting that Hachamovitch doesn't mention his own company's Flash alternative in his post.

Maybe somebody should check the bottom of elevator shaft.