In 2012 the market for tablets and mini tablets exploded as Apple, Amazon, Google, and other manufacturers bet big on the technology. And it’s worked. Global shipments for tablets are expected to rise to 210 million in 2013, beating estimates for PC shipments.

Welcome to the the Post-PC era. Here’s your tablet.

Will the desktop PC ever truly be gone? Give us your predictions in the comments.

HP’s flirtation with mobile technology consisted largely of its acquisition of Palm in 2010. However, the company wasn’t able to compete with Apple, and discontinued all of its webOS products near the end of 2011. HP recently released several hybrid PC/tablet devices based on Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system, but if Microsoft’s Surface is any indication, those devices aren’t particularly in demand, at least from home consumers.

So, losing the hardware game that had sustained it for decades, HP has turned to its enterprise services for revenue. Unfortunately, value hasn’t been found there either, and HP has announced 29,000 layoffs planned by the end of fiscal year 2014.

In HP’s third quarter 2012 earnings report, the first $8 billion write-down was blamed on Electronic Data Systems (EDS), an IT services company HP bought in 2008 for $13.9 billion. It’s value didn’t hold, and HP shares continued to decline. At the end of 2012, HP stock is trading at around $14, down from highs of around $50 near the beginning of 2011

The company’s fourth quarter 2012 earnings report blamed the majority of the second $8 billion write-down on Autonomy, a British knowledge management service company it acquired in 2011 for $10.2 billion. There was a twist this time, though. HP specifically laid the blame for more than $5 billion of the write-down on former Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch and other former Autonomy executives. HP brazenly accused Autonomy execs of “serious accounting improprieties, misrepresentations, and disclosure failures” prior to the acquisition.

Almost immediately, Lynch fired back at HP, claiming that HP mismanagement was responsible for key people leaving Autonomy after the acquisition. Lynch even created a website and issued an open letter to combat the allegations. In his letter he denies any wrongdoing on Autonomy’s part, saying, “I utterly reject all allegations of impropriety.” He points out that world-class auditing firms, as well as HP’s own accounting people, had access to Autonomy’s books during the due diligence period of the acquisition.

Lynch goes on to accuse HP of operational and financial mismanagement of Autonomy, and leveled some allegations about HP department infighting that made the company appear rather childish. He implored HP to explain, in detail, how $5 billion dollars in accounting fraud could have gone unnoticed.

HP responded to Lynch’s open letter, though it did not detail the numbers in its allegations. Instead, HP insisted that the matter would be resolved by the UK Serious Fraud Office, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and the U.S. Department of Justice. It then haughtily added that it looks forward to “hearing Dr. Lynch and other former Autonomy employees answer questions under penalty of perjury.” On December 28, 2012, it was confirmed by HP that the U.S. Department of Justice is currently investigating Autonomy’s accounts.

Obviously, someone is lying. Either Lynch and other Autonomy execs are guilty of a nearly unfathomable amount of fraud and deceit, or HP ran Autonomy (and possibly EDS, for that matter) into the ground with shoddy management. Either way, HP overpaid for Autonomy, a move that shows just how desperate the company is to gain traction with its enterprise services.

Who is telling the truth, HP or Mike Lynch? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

As HP looks to the future, it’s hard to see 2013 being a turnaround year for the company. In addition to Autonomy-related lawsuits which will carry on for years, the company’s restructuring efforts will continue to cut into its quarterly profits. While Apple and Samsung compete to dominate the new frontier of computer hardware, HP will be limping toward a coherent, fully-integrated business structure.

This doesn’t mean the death of HP, though. In its many decades of existence the company has, much like IBM, re-invented itself a few times, and it is likely to survive by doing so again. Exactly what value HP will be bringing to customers in the future isn’t clear, but come 2015 the company should be lean enough for a solid leader take it in almost any direction.

How can companies like HP succeed in the future? Let us know in the comments.

The company unveiled its Kindle Fire tablet and some new Kindles this week, along with a new innovative web browser called Silk.

Now, VentureBeat is reporting that HP is looking to unload Palm ASAP and that Amazon is the “closest to finalizing the deal.” This comes from what the publication cites as “a well-placed source”.

Such an acquisition could give Amazon an operating system in webOS. The Kindle Fire is built on Android and utilizes Amazon’s own Android market, but if Amazon gets webOS, there’s no telling where this could go.

Speaking of the Kindle Fire, some questions have been brought into the spotlight regarding the device’s supply and demand. It only costs $199. Reuters quotes analyst Brian Blair as saying, “When [Amazon CEO, Jeff] Bezos quipped that people should get their pre-orders in quick, that wasn’t just a sales pitch. That was him warning this will sell out.”

Digitimes systems is reporting that Amazon will outsource the production of 10.1 inch tablets to Foxconn electronics, which works on the iPad, as well as Amazon’s Kindle e-readers. Such tablets, it says, are expected to ship before the end of the year. The announced Kindle Fire is a 7 inch tablet.

Flash forward just seven weeks after the TouchPad hit store shelves, and HP has discontinued all webOS devices. This comes on the heels of an announcement where HP is looking to spinoff it’s hardware division and look to reposition themselves as a corporate technology provider.

At the moment you can get a 16GB HP Touchpad at firesale pricing: $99 and a 32GB HP Touchpad for $149 — that is if you can find one.

Currently HP TouchPads are sold out at pretty much everywhere online including: HP, HP Home & Office, Amazon, MicroCenter, Office Max, Office Depot, Radio Shack, Sam’s Club, Target, Walmart, HH Gregg, Best Buy… I could keep going, but I think you get the idea.

Some businesses that didn’t even drop the price are out of stock as well, as some people purchased the tablet at full price hoping to get it price matched later. That’s a pretty hefty risk, as nothing is guaranteed.

There is no denying that people want the TouchPad, as long as it’s for the firesale price. SlickDeals.net currently has ONE thread devoted to the TouchPad which has seen well over 4.2 million views since Friday evening.

The social media manager for HP took to Twitter where she attempted to help people understand that HP was temporarily out of stock. It appears that she was attempting to steer people away from the already crippled various HP .com’s that thrifty shoppers had brought down.

As you might guess, shortly after this link was shared… the alert site was slowed to a crawl.

There are some bloggers who are saying shoppers shouldn’t be lured in by the cheap price, as you’re being lead into a dead ecosystem. Specs aren’t what make tablets great, it’s the apps. Bloggers suggest that app developers will abandon webOS as they’d be developing for a dead technology.

Sure, that logic sounds good in theory, but it shouldn’t cause you to not buy a $99 tablet. It’s already been announced that several hacker development groups are hard at work at porting the popular Android OS to the device. If this happens, it will essentially turn your $99 TouchPad into a $500 Android tablet. Not a bad investment if you ask me.

“Touchdroid — Android for the HP Touchpad” is currently in progress by a group of hackers. They already have a site in development along with an overview of there plans for porting Android.

Welcome to the official development thread of Touchdroid, by the Touchdroid team. As part of the open Android and RootzWiki communities, we want to make our Android port as open as possible, and providing development insight to all of our users. Since we are just beginning, this threads original post and two or three following posts will be reserved for future use by the team as this will be updated frequently over time. We are attempting to port Android to the HP Touchpad, which was originally shipped with webOS.

It’ll be interesting to see over the next few weeks what new developments come out regarding the HP TouchPad. How soon will Android be ported to the device? How cheap will accessories for the device be?

Did you grab an HP TouchPad over the weekend? If so where did you get yours? Let us know in the comments.

"Today we’re embarking on a new era of webOS with the goal of linking a wide family of HP products through the best mobile experience available," said Jon Rubinstein, SVP and GM of HP’s Palm Global Business Unit. "The flexibility of the webOS platform makes it ideal for creating a range of innovative devices that work together to keep you better connected to your world."

Full specs here. 

In addition, HP introduced the Veer smartphone, which also runs webOS. In fact, it’s the smallest webOS phone to date. It will be available in early Spring. 

"While much of the industry is trending toward larger and larger devices, we believe there’s also a whole lot of room for thinking small,” said Jon Rubinstein. "Veer bridges the gap for a new generation of smartphone users, proving they really can have it all without sacrificing the size they want."

Specs on that here. 

HP also announced the HP Pre3 smartphone running webOS, which the company says is "ideal smartphone for multitasking professionals." It will be available in the summer.

HPHP Touchpad, HP Veer and HP Pre3! Our HP Corporate communications team has summarized all the links to our WebOS news that dropped today –> http://tlk.tc/bcy16 hours ago 157 likes 19 comments

"In the suite of webOS products we’re introducing today, Pre3 is our premier phone, designed for the speed of business," said Rubinstein. "It enables professionals to accomplish more of their important workday tasks while easily keeping their fingers on the pulse of their personal lives."

Specs on that one here.

Engadget has an interesting piece on "What Killed the Kin", Microsoft’s ill-fated feature phone that has not been around for very long. The article seems to suggest that the product line may have been doomed from the get go.

Gizmodo reports that Finland’s policy to make broadband a legal right went into effect today. This was originally announced back in October. "It’s only a 1Mbps connection for now, but by 2015 they’re promised 100Mbps," writes Kat Hannaford.

Complaints about the iPhone 4′s antenna troubles have amounted to multiple class action suits against Apple, according to reports. Boy Genius Report has an alleged "conversation" with Steve Jobs, who appears to be playing down the antenna issues. Update: Fortune reports this conversation was a Facek, citing Apple PR.

HP completed its acquisition of Palm, after just a couple months. HP got it for a pirce of $5.70 per share of Palm common stock in cash.

Original Article (04/28): Hewlett-Packard just announced its intent to buy Palm for $1.2 Billion at $5.70 per share. The transaction has already been approved by the HP and Palm boards of directors.

The move was made to give HP a better shot at winning some smartphone marketshare – an industry quickly growing.

"Palm’s innovative operating system provides an ideal platform to expand HP’s mobility strategy and create a unique HP experience spanning multiple mobile connected devices,” said Todd Bradley, executive vice president, Personal Systems Group, HP. "And, Palm possesses significant IP assets and has a highly skilled team. The smartphone market is large, profitable and rapidly growing, and companies that can provide an integrated device and experience command a higher share. Advances in mobility are offering significant opportunities, and HP intends to be a leader in this market."

"We’re thrilled by HP’s vote of confidence in Palm’s technological leadership, which delivered Palm webOS and iconic products such as the Palm Pre. HP’s longstanding culture of innovation, scale and global operating resources make it the perfect partner to rapidly accelerate the growth of webOS," said Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein. "We look forward to working with HP to continue to deliver industry-leading mobile experiences to our customers and business partners."

Rubinstein, is expected to remain with the company.

"Originally issued last fall for the iPhone, GameCenter provides a portal into all things games-related, complete with news stories, video trailers, cheats, reviews, upcoming release dates and more," a GameFly representative tells WebProNews. "GameFly developed this version to meet the requests by subscribers and fans."

The free app also provides access to game screenshots, publisher and developer info, recent user and game critic reviews, box art, and game controls.

GameFly subscribers can use the app to manage their GameQ and member info. New features in the Palm app include Calendar Notification, which marks calendars for upcoming new releases, and Web O/S Games, which includes news, updates and price changes for Palm games. It’s available for Palm Pre and Pixi. The Android App requires Android OS 1.6 and above.

GameFly is the largest video game rental subscription service in the U.S.

"For example, AppCache lets you interact with web apps without a network connection and local databases allow you to store data locally on the device, so you don’t lose data even when you close the browser," explains Google in a post to its Mobile blog.

"For quick access to the most important features like ‘Dialer’, ‘Compose SMS’, ‘Inbox’ or ‘Contacts,’ you can add shortcuts to your iPhone home screen or Palm Launcher — so cheap calls and messaging will be just a single click away. And because the Google Voice web app uses advanced features of modern HTML5 browsers, it offers native app-like performance and speed," Google adds.

Users can not only access a streamlined version of their Google Voice inbox, but with the new app, they can display their Google Voice number as the outbound caller ID, so return calls come back to that number. It can also be used to send and receive text messages for free, and place international calls at Google Voice’s rates.

Users have to have a Google Voice account and a voice plan on their phones to place calls with the app. At this point, accounts are still available only on an invitation basis, although invites can be requested.

Related Articles:

> Google Voice Gets New Free VoIP Service

> Report Indicates Google Bought Gizmo5

> You Don’t Need A Google Number To Use Google Voice

Google has now launched search options for mobile in the United States on Android, iPhone, and Palm WebOS devices.

Search options look slightly different on mobile devices. They appear on the right side of the screen as opposed to the left side. The link to bring up the search options menu appears on the right (on search result pages) as well.

If you haven’t been keeping these search options in mind for SEO in the past, you may want to start considering it now. Being on mobile, means that people may be using them more often as they look for specific information quickly. It can be more of a pain to scroll through results on a phone, and options may provide just the right filters to eliminate the need to scroll much.

Users of devices that don’t support Google’s mobile search options are already complaining. For example, one person commenting on Google’s announcement says, "I’m really sad to see so many of these new Google mobile services being rolled out for Android, iPhone, and Palm, but not for Windows Mobile. I hope you guys will keep developing for us WinMo users too!"

Another says, "Give BlackBerry users some love please! We’ve got to be one of the larger user bases out there for mobile searches…"

It would not be surprising to see Google expand the feature to more devices in the near future. The company is generally pretty good about trying to make its products available to more users when possible. Just about every day it seems that they are announcing the expansion of some product to more devices or to more languages.

Overall, the number of mobile devices accessing Wi-Fi hotspots grew by 79 percent in the first half of this year. While the iPhone and iPod Touch remain the most popular Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices, collectively representing 97.8 percent of all mobile device connections, the Palm Pre launched as the fifth most popular mobile device in June 2009, just within the first three months of its introduction.

When looking specifically at the online audience in cafes and coffee shops the findings indicate that people tend to use these places as the extended "home office" or "college library" with 83 percent of users connecting locally in their own neighborhood.

Additionally, 40 percent are business decision makers with management titles, 23 percent have C-level or VP titles, and 44 percent are in small-to mid-sized businesses.

The caf Wi-Fi audience also reported that 38 percent make an online purchase during their visit and 77 percent are in the market to make a major purchase in the next 12 months.  Purchasing plans in the next 12 months include:

• 48 percent intend to buy a new smart phone
• 54 percent plan to travel more than once on at least a week-long vacation
• 28 percent plan to buy a new laptop
• 24 percent plan to buy a car

"The findings completely challenge the assumption that this is a task-oriented audience just checking e-mail or doing work.  Instead, they’re fully engaging the internet when on the go – using social networks, researching products, and actively buying goods and services," said Kevin McKenzie, CEO of JiWire.

"As people increasingly spend more time out of the home and out of the office, we look forward to sharing continued insights to help marketers better understand this hard to reach mobile audience."