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HP is reportedly planning to re-enter the consumer tablet space. A year after the company killed off the HP TouchPad tablet (after only two months on the market), The Verge reports that HP is creating a new Mobility business unit to focus on consumer tablets, among other things.

HP Slate 500

The HP TouchPad was the result of HP’s $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm. When the tablet didn’t immediately sell very well, then CEO Leo Apotheker killed the project entirely, and the company wound up losing even more money than it spent on Palm.

Now Apotheker has been replaced by former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, and it looks like HP is ready to take another swipe at the tablet space. HP executives have said a few times over the past year that new tablets featuring Windows 8 would be on the way.

But The Verge obtained a leaked memo which provides the first details about the new mobility division at HP — one that doesn’t seem to be affiliated with the remnants of the Palm/webOS team.

The memo also confirms that HP will soon launch a “commercial tablet,” but that it will be managed by the company’s PC division… much like the HP Slate 500 and HP Slate 2 Windows 7 tablets before it.

The new division will be headed by Alberto Torres, a former Nokia executive in charge of the company’s work on the MeeGo operating system.