ConsumerIT - For Europe's High Volume PC Retailers, Distributors & Builders

HP finally answers the question on what will happen to webOS-- the company will neither sell nor discontinue the OS, but will instead "contribute" it to the open source community.

“webOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected and scalable,” CEO Meg Whitman says. “By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices.”

The announcement comes after months of speculation on how HP was going to sell webOS to anyone from Amazon to RIM and even Oracle-- but it appears HP remained empty-handed after trying to find a buyer.

So it did the second-best thing-- going to the charity shop instead of the dumpster.

HP mentions no future hardware plans so the TouchPad will probably remain the last HP-branded webOS device, at least for a while.

webOS has something of a rocky history-- from the $1.2BN Palm purchase in 2010 to HP spending $1.66BN to kill off Palm and webOS after ex-CEO Leo Apotheker announced the now-scrapped Garage Sale plans.

A bit of a sorry finale (one ending with not a bang, but a whimper) for once promising software, unless the open source community manages to make something great with it.

Go HP to Contribute webOS to Open Source

The printer market grows by a "slender" 0.2% Y-o-Y in Q3 2011, remaining virtually flat and shipping 6.4M units according to IDC-- while revenues experience a -11.9% Y-o-Y decline and fall to $2.8BN.

In comparison, Q3 2010 revenues total $3.1BN.

Both consumer and commercial print hardware demand are stalling across W. Europe as economies struggle with the sovereign debt crisis, the analyst says. The only segment showing "robust growth" within commercial print products is the laser MFP product segment.

Industries are defined by clashes between rivals. Think Pepsi vs Coca-Cola, Microsoft vs Apple or AMD vs Intel. But should we now forget about using the last example?

Speaking in an interview with the San Jose Mercury News, AMD spokesman Michael Silverman insists: "We will all need to let go of the old 'AMD versus Intel' mind-set, because it won't be about that anymore." Will AMD now carve its way forward without glancing at where Intel is heading?

If this is the case, it might mean the end of a rivalry (complete with legal feuds and blows) going on since the early 1980s. Intel was founded in 1968-- and AMD only a year later.

It might look like a regular iPad dock, but according to Mustek the DockingScan S400 is actually the first integrated "Made for iPad" scanner.

Working together with the i-Scan App (available from the app store), the S400 scans pages up to A4 in size. Scanning is a simple affair-- one simply puts the iPad in the dock before starting the scanning app.

Scanned images are then automatically saved in the iPad photo app, with resolutions of up to 300 dpi in jpeg format.

Compatible with both iPad 1 and 2, the device also serves as a docking cradle and a charging station.

Go Mustek DockingScan S400