"HP today began executing its plan to deliver an open webOS by committing to a schedule for making the platform's source code available under an open source license.
The company aims to complete this milestone in its entirety by September.
HP also announced it is releasing version 2.0 of webOS's innovative developer tool, Enyo. Enyo 2.0 enables developers to write a single application that works across mobile devices and desktop web browsers, from the webOS, iOS and Android platforms to the Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers – and more. The source code for Enyo is available today, giving the open source community immediate access to the acclaimed application framework for webOS." Read more inside..

Thanks to a reminder from WebProNews, it's instructive to look again at the smartphone world via StatCounter, a pro service embedded on many web sites which tracks the browser and OS used to access them. And, reflecting the still enormous installed base of Symbian-powered smartphones across the world, Symbian still (for web access, at least) still dominates the world, at 31%.
The counter-intuitive nature of the chart, i.e. that Symbian still dominates despite Android and iOS activations reportedly running very high through 2011, is explained by the difference between sales marketshare and installed base 'share'. Earlier this year, actual sales of Android-powered smartphones per quarter overtook Symbian. But the 300 million or so active Symbian users across the world - regardless of whether they're using a three year old Nokia 5800 or even an older N95 - is a statistic that can't be ignored for actual use. You may remember that I've talked before about not underestimating the inertia behind Symbian's installed base - the numbers boggle the mind.
Added to the huge installed base of Symbian smartphones is the factor of the rise and rise of affordable data, even on pay as you go SIM cards, across the world. In other words, just about everyone is now getting online. In StatCounter's eyes, web access is web access." via allaboutsymbian.com

"Didn't jump on the webOS 2.2.4 Doctor bandwagon yesterday? Can't say we blame you for waiting for the possibility of the update for your Pre3 to come over the air. Your patience has paid off, dear reader, as just a day later the update itself has been made available. As you would expect for an X.X.4 update, it's a small package that contains, we quote, "a variety of software improvements", in other words: bug fixes. The update weighs in at 29MB for Euro Pre3 owners and just 10MB for the AT&T Pre3 -update- and 9MB for the handful of Verizon Pre3 owners.
Update: Got an unlocked GSM Pre 2 or a Sprint FrankenPre2? Fire up the System Updates app, because you're apt to find an update to webOS 2.2.4 waiting for you. The changelog matches the previous update for just a handful of Pre 2 owners, except this time it's for everybody (unless you're on a Verizon or AT&T Pre 2). Now all we need is the HP Veer to get 2.2.4 and all of the recent webOS smartphones will be running the latest version of the OS (plus the Veer would stand to finally get Touch-to-Share)." via webosnation.com

"As Android and Apple continue to dominate the U.S. smartphone market, RIM and other smartphone manufacturers have made moves to reclaim lost market share.
PORT WASHINGTON, NEW YORK, December 13, 2011 - According to The NPD Group, a leading market research company, Android's operating system (OS) share of smartphone sales grew to command more than half of the U.S. smartphone market (53 percent) from January through October 2011, as Apple's iOS share grew to reach 29 percent of the market, and RIM's OS share declined to 11 percent. RIM and other companies that were formerly on top of NPD's smartphone rankings, however, have made critical business decisions this past year in a quest to shore up their U.S. smartphone businesses." Read more inside..

"HP today announced it will contribute the webOS software to the open source community.
HP plans to continue to be active in the development and support of webOS. By combining the innovative webOS platform with the development power of the open source community, there is the opportunity to significantly improve applications and web services for the next generation of devices.
webOS offers a number of benefits to the entire ecosystem of web applications. For developers, applications can be easily built using standard web technologies. In addition, its single integrated stack offers multiplatform portability. For device manufacturers, it provides a single web-centric platform to run across multiple devices. As a result, the end user benefits from a fast, immersive user experience." Read more inside..

"A rumor emerging from HP's prospective sale of its webOS group has identified a new buyer as well as the possible reasons for HP's indecision on the subject. The VentureBeat tip claimed that Intel has just started discussing the prospect of a deal. Qualcomm, best known for its Snapdragon chips, was allegedly still in discussions in spite of public denials. HP hasn't closed any deal because it's determined to get a promise that it can use webOS for printers afterwards, the unnamed source claimed. The PC builder had promised webOS printers almost as soon as it closed the deal to buy Palm but has yet to release any printer with the OS. Keeping it as an obstacle to a deal suggests HP is close to releasing webOS printers and wants to know it won't face OS rights issues shortly afterwards. So far, HP has only ever put out one printer with a mobile OS, a one-off device with a low-end Android tablet as its main interface. Any sale would likely be a matter of recouping some of HP's losses. It had to take $3.3 billion in expenses to drop its webOS mobile hardware and, while it will never get that amount after having paid $1.2 billion for Palm in 2010, it may trim several hundred million in costs by reaching a buyer. Intel hasn't commented on the rumor. It may see webOS as a chance to get a more optimized mobile OS of its own, either by folding the interface into MeeGo or using it as a separate platform. MeeGo has so far only been used on a handful of niche tablets and the Nokia N9, which may be Nokia's last MeeGo device following a pledge to support Windows Phone first." via electronista.com

"Worldwide sales of mobile devices totaled 440.5 million units in the third quarter of 2011, up 5.6 percent from the same period last year, according to Gartner, Inc. Non-smartphone devices performed well, driven by demand in emerging markets for low-cost devices from white-box manufacturers, and for dual-subscriber identity module (SIM) devices.
Sales into the channel reached 460 million units. Gartner analysts said this increase was because of inventory build-up in the channel partly because of the shipping of new devices late in the quarter but mostly to prepare the channel for the holiday season. Gartner expects most of the build-up to be sold by the first quarter of 2012." Read more inside..

"It's the end of an era as Adobe has confirmed that it will no longer be developing its Flash Player for mobile devices. Instead Adobe will be focusing on HTML5 and Adobe-AIR native apps for the major mobile platforms. Adobe's VP Danny Winokur explained the decision:
Our future work with Flash onmobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash develoeprs to package native apps with Adobe-AIR for all major app stores. We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook. We will of course continue to provide critical bug fixes and security updates for existing device configurations. We will also allow our source code licensees to continue working on and release their own implementations. " via mobile-review.com

"We knew HP was having trouble selling webOS devices, and as part of their quarterly fiscal announcement, they announced that they plan to discountinue operations for webOS devices, to include the TouchPad and webOS phones.In the press release sent out this afternoon, HP confirmed that they were in discussions for an acquisition of Autonomy and announced preliminary results for Q3 2011, with revenue up to $31.2 billion in comparison to $30.7 billion this time last year.But this is PreCentral - we don't care about any of that, and we're pretty sure you don't care either. Needless to say, our minds are completely blown by this news. HP didn't give any reason in their press release for the shut down (we've reached out for comment and will update if/when we get it).So what does this mean? The statement was carefully worded to state that they're "discontinuing operations for webOs devices," not webOS as an operating system. If anything, this should add fuel to the second option we discussed earlier today when the shocking word of an HP breakup first surfaced: HP is more interested in webOS than devices. They tried to give it a go with hardware, but quickly realized that they weren't going to be able to make it work without massive long-term investment and commitment. So less than a year after acquiring all of Palm for $1.2 billion, we're looking at a hazy future for webOS.Today it became approximately one thousand times harder to recommend anybody buy a TouchPad or Veer or Pre3. The entire ecosystem is in doubt. Now it's pretty clear why HP has had trouble telling us when or where the Pre3 might actually be available. There's the possibility that maybe someday some other mobile device manufacturer might pick up webOS and use it on their handsets, but if/when that happens is anybody's guess."(full press release here)

HP webOS system update 3.0.2 offers improvements in the following areas.
Calendar
* Quicker Just Type event search and event creation
* Improved handling of meeting cancellations
Email
* Faster scrolling
* Improved message content and image display
* Improved management of multiple emails in Draft and Outbox views
Music
* Reduced audio skipping when the device is running other applications
* Better display of album art
Photos & Videos
* Added ability to set wallpapers
* Faster and more reliable handling of individual photos and albums
Text Assist  Improved speed and accuracy of auto-corrections
Web
* Increased scrolling support compatibility within web pages
* Improved performance of remote HTML5 video playback
* Improved responsiveness of auto correction within the browser
webOS System  Fixed issues with oversensitive screen rotation
Security This release addresses a number of security issues with HP webOS software.