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HP introduces its strategy for WebOS-- optimising the OS for tablets, just alongside the revealing of its TouchPad tablet.

The TouchPad (to be available in summer 2011) carries a 9.7" touchscreen and a Snapdragon dual-core CPU. It also features connectivity with other WebOS devices, such as the Veer and Pre3.

The new WebOS framework (called Enyo), is also sounding interesting. Relying on web-based technologies, HP says it allows for new WebOS apps to automatically stretch between different screen resolutions without any issues.

New WebOS apps can also run in a PC browser-- without an emulator or OS install.

Also showing at Mobile World Congress is a new version of HP's App Catalog-- also tablet friendly, with a magazine-style interface and streamlined payment options.

HP's vision for its WebOS ecosystem does sound impressive on paper, even if noone's got their hands on the actual TouchPad tablet yet (outside of HP itself). But will it be enough to rival Android 3.0 and RIM's Playbook? WebOS does appear to offer a fluid user experience for customers, alongside real-time cloud syncing across devices, but a lot remains unknown. Meanwhile, the Touchpad's specifications impress, but only just.

Ultimately it an increasingly saturated tablet market-- with Google, RIM, and now HP all wanting a slice of Apple's pie (and who knows what Apple will have up its iSleeve?), the tablet war will be fought over more than simply hardware specs.

Go HP TouchPad

Some drive manufacturers believe mini-SATA (mSATA) will become the industry standard for mobile computing. Intel and Samsung, amongst others, are launching mSata products, such as Intel's 310 series.

Introduced at Intel's Developer Forum, mSATA is the smallest SATA connector, designed for the flexible form-factor offered by mini-SSDs (whereas SSDs are normally designed to fit the traditional 2.5" HDD form factor). Thus, mSATA SSDs allow vendors and OEMs to design and develop drives in a variety of sizes and shapes, depending on what the buyer needs.

However mSATA drives use a PCIe slot-- which current PCs don't natively support. Since it uses a PCIe mini-connector, the SATA protocol allows seamless data moving between HDD and smaller SSD.

This allows for dual-drive machines where the mSATA device carries the OS (increasing overall system performance) while the HDD acts as mass storage device.

Mini-SATA drives are also marketed to OEMs for incorporation into tablet devices.

Go Intel 310 Series

Go Samsung SSDs

Canalys reports the global PC industry shows growth of 19% in Q4 2010 over Q4 20009-- since if one counts tablets as PCs.

W. Europe's PC market shows 10.7% growth-- while C. and E. Europe show 38.4% growth.

In fact the analyst says the majority of Q4 market growth is thanks to rising tablet demand. The analyst says that while tablets are not attractive to first-time or low-income buyers, they are increasingly popular as additional computing devices.

Canalys urges vendors to recognie tablets as "an integral new component of the overall PC landscape"-- incorporating tablet device (as in touchscreen devices with screens over 7" in size) shipments in its market reports (unlike a number of other analysts).

Apple gets to the W.W. market's 3rd place in Canalys' report, with 10.8% market share and 241% growth over Q4 2009 (thanks to impressive iPad and Mac sales). Apple benefits from tablets, just as Acer, Samsung and Asus did before with netbooks.

Meanwhile HP (17.7% market share) and Acer (12.8%) retain the W.W. market's top 2 positions.

As for Q1 2011, Canalys predicts substantial consumer inventory build-up-- and significant retail discounting. This is due to Intel's upcoming refresh, as well as rising VAT levels across 5 countries (Poland, Latvia, Slovakia, Switzerland and the UK).

Go Canalys Reports Global PC Market Growth in Q4 2010

Qualcomm announces its next Snapdragon mobile processor architecture at Mobile World Congress, Barcelona.

Codenamed Krait, the next-gen multi-core (single, dual and quad) 28nm chipsets will offer speeds of up to 2.5GHz per core, alongside what Qualcomm claims is 150% higher overall performance and 65% lower power consumption than current-gen ARM-based CPU cores.

Krait chips will also feature wifi, GPS, bluetooth, NFC support and stereoscopic 3D video/photo capture and playback.

A new iteration of Adreno GPUs is also included, supporting up to 4 3D cores and HD output to flat panel displays over HDMI.

Dual-core AP8960 processor samples will be available by Q2 2011; single-core MSM8930 and quad-core 8063 versions should be out in early 2012.

Go Qualcomm Announces Next-Gen Snapdragon Mobile Chipset Family