News has surfaced that two “Apple iPad killers” have been killed themselves.

The first, a tablet device from Microsoft, the Courier, will not see the light of day according to Microsoft.  Microsoft confirmed it has canceled further development and production on its tablet project., stating, “at any given time, across any of our business groups, there are new ideas being investigated, tested, and incubated. It’s in Microsoft’s DNA to continually develop and incubate new technologies to foster productivity and creativity,” said Frank Shaw, corporate vice president of communications at Microsoft, in a statement. “The ‘Courier’ project is an example of this type of effort and its technologies will be evaluated for use in future Microsoft offerings.”

Pictures of the Courier showed a device in the shape of a book with two 7-inch screens, a built-in camera and Wi-Fi. The device also was said to support a several user inputs such as touching, handwriting and drawing by finger or through the use of a stylus.

In other death of iPad competitor news, HP has reportedly decided to axe the Windows 7 tablet computer that they had been developing and which had been even been displayed by Microsoft.

The much ballyhooed HP tablet, unveiled by Microsoft CEO, and one prone to extreme over-excitement, Steve Ballmer at CES 2010 in January. The device was expected to go on sale sometime in the middle of  2010, however Arnold Schwarzenegger has apparently been brought in to terminate the project (no word on if the Governor of California was actually brought in to terminate the project).

Will HP turn its focus to a tablet running Web OS, the operating system of HP’s newest acquisition, Palm? Will Google’s reported tablet see the light of day and will it run Chrome OS or Android?  Will anyone ever admit they purchased the JooJoo tablet?

Which tablet device, if any, do you think will make it to market and will it provide any competition to the iPad?

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