Hewlett-Packard is negotiating the sale of its webOS platform to Amazon according to a source who claims to know what's going on.

Amazon is reportedly now examining the patents that HP acquired when it bought webOS last year as part of its $1.2 billion purchase of Palm.

HP CEO Meg Whitman told staff Tuesday that no decision would be made about the fate of webOS for another three or four weeks. Amazon's patent examination would explain the delay. It might also suggests that Amazon could walk away if it doesn't like what it finds or if financial terms can't be reached. webOS isn't expected to fetch more than a few hundred million dollars.

Whitman has been playing a coy "will she or won't she" game about webOS, publicly toying with the idea of HP fielding new webOS devices while last week HP PC chief and erstwhile head of Palm Todd Bradley labeled tales of webOS being sold "rumors." If they can't get the deal done they may actually have to do something with it.

Earlier this week Reuters reported being told by four people "close to the matter" that HP was looking to sell the mobile software platform and one of its sources reportedly said Oracle might be interested, a claim that sounds as fishy as a red herring. Oracle and HP aren't exactly on the best of terms these days and Oracle is utterly unlikely to do anything to extricate HP from the pickle it's in trying to recoup its spoiled investment in Palm.

Based on industry speculation the wire service said Amazon as well as RIM, IBM and Intel might be interested in webOS and remembered that former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein, now in a vague product innovation role at HP, is on Amazon's board.

It is believed that Amazon wants webOS as an alternative to Android, despite the fact that Amazon runs its Android Appstore stocked with thousands of apps and that Android - well, a highly customized version of Android - runs its highly promising dirt-cheap Kindle Fire, the $199 tablet could give the $499 iPad its first really serious competition when it ships November 15.

According DigiTimes Amazon has upped the number of money-losing Kindle Fires it wants delivered before the end of the year to five million units. That's supposed to be its second increase. It reportedly went from 3.5 million units to four million before. It's supposedly got 100,000 pre-orders for the thing the first day and had a total of 220,000 in a week. Reportedly Apple iPads and iPhones are experiencing production cuts, sending its stock down.

Amazon Thursday updated its Appstore interface and features, including support for in-app purchases, parental controls and faster downloads, in time for Fire to take advantage of it. webOS has few apps to speak of.

Interestingly Reuters reported being told that HP really bought Palm for its patents. Maybe that's what Amazon's after too lest even a highly customized Android paint a big fat patent infringement bull's eye on its back.

Back in September Byte thought that Samsung was likely to want the webOS patent portfolio to ward off Apple. It said the patents were broad and deep with fundamental claims that go back to the mid-90s and "reach far into the guts of most mobile tech in use today or on the horizon" including mobile multitasking, distributed networking, cloud computing, mobile user interface controls, telephony, visual search, 4G and touch.

Byte said the portfolio was valued at $1.4 billion last year but Reuters was told by one of its sources that webOS wouldn't fetch a high price at auction.

In August HP pulled its poorly selling webOS-based TouchPad tablet after six weeks on the market, firing its hardware people in the process.

Meanwhile, Barnes & Noble unveiled another low-end device: a $249 8.1-inch Android-based Nook Tablet that's 50 buck more than Amazon's Kindle Fire but half of the iPad's starting price. It's a little bigger than the Kindle Fire, with double the memory at 16GB - expandable further with a removable memory card - and is supposed to run for up to 11.5 hours to Amazon's eight. It should be available next week.