HP has announced it will contribute the former Palm smartphone operating system, webOS, software to the open source community.

A major shakeup is underway at HP. The company has decided to drop webOS and is considering the divestiture of its PC business. It has boosted its enterprise software operations with a deal to acquire of Autonomy.

Holy cow, Batman… HP has, after a bazillion years, finally unveiled its “TouchPad”, even though some thought it might be called the PalmPad, with Holy Pad being my contribution to a world of Jesus Phones, Jesus Tablets and Jesus Pads – let alone those from sweet Honeycomb powered tablets from ye olde Google.

Market analysts IDC says that Apple's iPhone is now outselling Nokia to take the lead in the smartphone market. Australian smartphone shipments have risen 67% year-on-year in Q3 2010 with over 60% of new mobiles now being smartphones, according to the results of their Q3 mobile device tracker.

HP has taken the wraps off HP webOS 2.0, the new operating system for Palm devices, and announced availability of first device to run it.

HP has agreed to acquire security and compliance management provider ArcSight.

New research and forecasting from Gartner suggests that Android will become the dominant mobile operating system in the near future. And while total unit sales will grow for all the players in this increasingly competitive market, Android will move from newcomer to leader in just five years.

HP, already the world's largest technology company, is set to expand further with the acquisition of Palm.

It started as a joke, but the merits of a Facebook buyout of Palm are starting to gather some weight.

The writing has been on the wall for some time now.  Finally, rumours abound that Palm has put up the for-sale signs.