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Canon rolls out a set of printing and scanning solutions for the holiday season-- the Pixma MG6320 and MG5420 All-in-Ones (AIO), the Pixma iP7220 printer and the CanoScan 9000F Mark II scanner.

The MG6320 and MG5420 have a sleek and compact design, with a low-height body and a redesigned paper casette allowing the printer to sit flush against a wall. The MG6320 carries a 3.5-inch touchscreen, while the MG5420 has a similar 3-inch display, and both have built-in wireless printing capabilities allowing use with iOS, Android and Windows RT devices as well as Canon digital cameras (via PictBridge WLAN).

Meanwhile the iP7220 is a wireless printer with output speeds reaching up to 15ipm in black and white and 10 ipm in colour. It has Quiet Mode for less noisy operation and Canon claims it prints a 4x6-inch borderless photo in around 21 seconds.

And finally the CanoScan 9000F Mark II is an easy-to-use scanner with a maximum optical resolution of 9600dpi for film (via separate Film Adapter Unit) and 4800dpi for other media. It also has an Auto Dcoument Fix feature allowing the correction of both scanned text and images.

Go Canon

Ailing Japanese CE maker Sharp can have a bit of a sigh of relief-- Qualcomm expands its earlier agreement with the company for the development of energy-efficient MEMS displays.

Through deal Sharp receives $61 million by end 2012 in return for the further development on IGZO (Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide) display technology with Qualcomm subsidiary Pixtronix.

The two companies give no timeline on the investment, other than that "after sufficient time" Sharp will receive a furter $61m while Qualcomm gets to own 5% of the company.

The resulting IGZO displays will go in use in "a variety of devices," including smartphones and tablets.

Go Qualcomm Expands Display Technology Agreement With Sharp

Ultrabook numbers might prove to be less than what Intel might have wanted, but ABI Research still predicts ultra portable laptop shipments will total 21 million units by end 2012.

Too-high prices and the wait for Windows 8 (not to mention a sluggish economy) kept customers from spending on such PCs, but the Windows 8 release and a slew of new models should help boost sales for this year and beyond.

ABI includes Apple's MacBook Air within the ultra portable category with laptops falling under Intel's ultrabook specification under the "ultra portable" category. In fact, Apple comes first in ABI's ultrabook Competitive Assessment study.

W. Europe is the 2nd largest ultrabook market, following, perhaps predictably, N. America.

According to ABI the majority of ultraboboks go for personal use, even if the consumer/business split should reach 60%/40% by 2017.

Go 21m Ultra Portable PCs to Ship Globally in 2012 (ABI Research)

If one is to believe a "leaked" roadmap on Russian website Always More Digital Western Digital is set to release 5TB HDDs in 2013-- with slides showing the future of both Green desktop and Red NAS 3.5-inch drives.

The supposed Green drive roadmap mentions the release of a 4TB WD40EZRX with 64MB cashe and SATA III interface on Q3 2013, before a 5TB W5OEZRX with the same cache and interface hits the market on Q4 2012.

Meanwhile the Red drive roadmap shows an identical release schedule for similar (in both size, cache and interface) drives.

The roadmap looks realistic enough, if for one issue-- will WD really leave just a 3 month gap between the release of drives with 4 and 5TB capacities?

WD so far refuses to comment on the speculation, but we wouldn't be too surprised if it (or rivals such as Seagate or Toshiba) end up doing what such rumours suggest.

Go WD Will Present 5TB Drives in 2013 (Always More Digital)