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It's odd to think of Hewlett-Packard as an underdog, but when it comes to media tablets everybody is looking up at runaway market leader Apple. Sounding more like a cheeky upstart than the world's largest technology company, HP over the weekend boasted that its forthcoming TouchPad tabletwould "become better than number one," an obvious reference to Apple's best-selling iPad.

"In the PC world, with fewer ways of differentiating HP's products from our competitors, we became number one," said HP senior vice president Eric Cador said at a press conference in Cannes, according to The Telegraph.

"In the tablet world we're going to become better than number one. We call it number one plus."

HP may soon have a chance to put its money where its mouth is. An unconfirmed report last weeksuggested that Wal-Mart will be carrying a 32GB TouchPad and could have product in its retail stores as early as June 1.

The company has not named an official release date beyond saying the TouchPad will be available this summer.

Priced at $599 for what appears to be a Wi-Fi only version of the 9.7-inch tablet, the TouchPad would appear to be fairly competitively priced with Apple's iPad 2.

But simply producing a similar device for a competitive price isn't the only challenge HP faces. The TouchPad is HP's first attempt at using its in-house webOS mobile operating system in a consumer-oriented tablet.

So far, tablets running Google's Android OS like the Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab, and Acer Iconia Tab A500 have proven most competitive against the iOS-based iPad — or at least seem to have the most momentum, with Android 3.0 Honeycomb now a factor in new and soon-to-be released tablets.

Read more here from PCMag.