After months of speculation, HP chief executive Meg Whitman announced on Friday that the firm will keep the webOS operating system running and offer it on an open source licence.

But what does this actually mean? First off, this is great news for customers who might have been caught up in the excitement and bought an HP TouchPad in the firesale as it means that updates for the device will be offered through an official channel.

It also means that the HP firesales, the latest of which took place on eBay's US site over the weekend, could ultimately work to HP's advantage by expanding the tablet's user base. There are currently hundreds of thousands of TouchPads in the hands of developers, many of whom bought the device for the excellent hardware so that they could port Android onto it.

Opening up webOS has now given developers a reason to continue using the OS that shipped with the tablet, and to help improve it and build a catalogue of apps. This could create that essential ecosystem for the platform and, although it doesn't have a realistic chance of catching Android and iOS in terms of the volume of apps, it will help make webOS devices more useful than is currently the case.

The release of the webOS source code is also good news for Android developers and end-users as the best bits from the software could find their way onto Google's operating system.

If Google engineers do take anything from webOS it is most likely to be the excellent gesture system which works really well with touch screens. Even the bods at Apple are likely to take a closer look at the source code to see whether there is anything that they can 'borrow' to improve iOS.

With the market dominated by Android and iOS devices, and Windows Phone yet to get a foothold, webOS could be just the ticket for a handset manufacturer willing to take a risk for the sake of differentiation.

Of course, webOS still has a long way to go to become commercially successful, as handset makers are unlikely to start packing and shipping devices with the software overnight. HP will need to demonstrate a long-term commitment to the project, which it hasn't been too good at lately.

In an era when open source software such as Android can become phenomenally successful, this could be the rebirth that webOS needs, and might even justify HP's Palm acquisition.

It will be interesting to see the resources that HP puts into the open source project. Handheld devices continue to eat into PC sales, and the demand for high-end smartphones and tablets is increasing all the time.

HP has been wise not to axe the platform and, even if third-party manufacturers don't use webOS, there is nothing to stop HP making another assault on the mobile market in a year or so.

HP is tipped to reveal the fate of the much-loved webOS operating system late on Friday afternoon.

Two weeks ago, during the HP Vision event in Vienna, chief executive Meg Whitman told French newspaper Le Figaro the firm would make a decision in two weeks' time, which, by our calculations, means all would have been revealed 16 December, but according to web site Precentral the decision will be made on Friday 9 December.

Whitman told Le Figaro she was taking so long as it was "not an easy decision, because we have a team of 600 people in limbo".

It feels like a long time since HP acquired Palm in 2010, for what now seems like the colossal sum of $1.2bn and both parties no doubt envisaged it would be a fruitful partnership that would lead to long-term success in the mobile market.

However, things haven't quite worked out that way and the IP assets of Palm that Todd Bradley, executive vice president of the personal systems group at HP, labelled as "significant" when they bought the firm look destined for the scrap heap.

HP never really seemed to push webOS devices, giving the HP Veer and Pre 3 rather muted launches. The PC manufacturer then made the rather questionable decision of scrapping the smartphones and the HP TouchPad just weeks after they were launched.

There were reports that Samsung would step in to buy webOS, but the South Korean firm, which has its own Bada operating system, shot down rumours before they gathered too much pace. It's a shame as many people who have used webOS have nothing but positive things to say about it.

With speculation growing that HP will use Windows 8 on forthcoming devices as well it seems all but inevitable that webOS will be consigned to the history books.

However, there is a glimmer of hope as the webOS operating system proved popular with customers during a successful fire sale of the TouchPad and if HP can get its act together there may be a chance of building an ecosystem yet.

Whatever the decision, this time HP needs to make sure it's final.

VIENNA: HP has said it expects to see 50 zettabytes of data being created every year by 2020 as a growing number of online users generate huge amounts of content on sites like Twitter. A zettabyte is one billion terabytes.

Prith Banerjee (pictured above on stage), head of HP Labs, said at the firm's Discover event that the number of online citizens across the globe will soar to four billion by 2020, driving huge growth in data creation.

"By 2020 there could be as many as four billion online interacting on social networks. While now there are 250 million tweets per day this will rise to tens of millions," he said.

"There's also going to be a huge increase of sensors on the network measuring everything from temperature to heart monitoring. We expect there to be one trillion sensors by 2020."

Banerjee added that HP expects a whopping 30 billion mobile phones to be in use by 2020, which is a fairly terrifying thought.

Clearly the claims have been made to underline the theme of the Discover event that businesses need to get better at managing structured and, crucially, unstructured data. The key launch of Autonomy's Idol 10 platform at the show could be seen as the centrepiece to this.

The predictions from HP also vary from those produced by IBM, which said in 2010 that it expects 35 zettabytes of data to be created annually by 2020, and business intelligence vendor SAS, which put the figure at 15 zettabytes by 2015.

Whichever firm is right, there's clearly no doubt that data is going to grow hugely, and that businesses need to think carefully about how they use this avalanche of information.

Like most of the technology world, V3 was eager to get its hands on a copy of Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs and, thanks to the nifty powers of Amazon's Kindle system, we've been enjoying the biography since yesterday afternoon.

The opening chapters provide a swift but thorough overview of Jobs' early life as he discovers that he was adopted, meets tech whiz Steve Wozniak, and eventually founds Apple, all while accidentally getting his on/off girlfriend pregnant and doing a lot of acid.

Jobs' voice comes through little but often in the opening chapters, Isaacson instead setting the scene and using information from those who knew him at the time to paint the background of his life, with hints at how these formative years would shape the success of Apple.

This involved Jobs' fascination with Buddhism that fed his desire for clean, intuitive technologies, to the ethos instilled in him by his father of ensuring that each and every component of a product is designed with love and care.

What also comes through a lot in the early chapters is just how pivotal Wozniak was to the early success of Apple, and how well the two Steves worked together. Woz's enduring love for HP for its research philosophy also shines through, something he told V3 about last week.

Yet the book is about Jobs and from the opening chapters there's a clear sense of destiny around him: the way he was able to bend those around him to his will, landing jobs at Atari, securing funding for Apple, making deals with resellers.

Isaacson admits that he tried hard to avoid the influence of Jobs' famous "reality distortion field", and perhaps here and there he succumbs. But it's impossible not to imagine a wiry, manic Jobs aged 22 acting in the manner described and getting his way.

This, of course, also means that there was an ugly, ruthless side to Jobs, and many recall being insulted, dismissed and overlooked by Jobs even at that young age, traits well known throughout his distinguished career.

For those interested in Apple and Jobs the book is clearly going to be something of a must-read. The early chapters suggest that it will live up to the hype, magnified by Jobs' death on 5 October and the access to the Apple founder and those around him granted to Isaacson.

We'll have a full review on V3 when we've finished the 600-page epic.

Irate TouchPad fans have taken to Twitter to vent their frustration after many were unable to buy one of the heavily discounted HP tablets online, leading some to suspect that the huge advanced publicity given to the fire sale was merely a cynical marketing ploy.

Online price finder tool InvisibleHand claimed that it saw the biggest ever surge in online shopping in the UK as the Dixons Group and Carphone Warehouse cut prices dramatically from Monday evening.

The 16GB TouchPad was on sale for £89 while the 32GB was going for £115, a huge discount on the usual RRP of £399 and £479 respectively.

"We briefly saw the highest ever number of UK consumers shopping simultaneously online, not to mention the largest number of shoppers visiting a single UK retailer - Dixons - for the same product simultaneously," said InvisibleHand founder Robin Landy.

"The number of simultaneous server requests we received was 50 per cent higher than the previous Monday's peak."

Scores of people complained of sluggish performance on the Currys, Dixons and PC World web sites, and some were left fuming after successfully placing one of the tablets in their virtual shopping basket only to have it removed at the checkout stage.

The retailers have now sold out of all TouchPads, while a note on the Carphone Warehouse web site states: "HP TouchPad is currently out of stock online and by phone - please do not call us to order this product."

So what have we all learned from this grubby little Primark clearance sale-esque dash for the TouchPad?

When a good piece of kit gets marked down at ridiculously low prices it garners a LOT of interest. Not just the retailers mentioned above but the likes of Comet and BestBuy were also quick to sell out of the device.

It's pretty clear that some of the retailers involved had relatively little stock to shift anyway, and were certainly ill-equipped to deal with the huge influx of web orders.

It remains to be seen whether retailers including Expansys and Clove decide to follow Dixons in heavily discounting the TouchPad. At the time of writing they were still selling the tablet for close to the original RRP.

UK customers looking to get their hands on a cheap HP TouchPad will be pleased to hear that Dixons Group, which owns Currys and PC World, will begin selling the device from £89 in an effort to ditch its stock.

Mark Webb, an employee at Dixons Group, confirmed on his Twitter page that the 16GB TouchPad will sell for £89 and the 32GB TouchPad from £115 at 6pm online on Monday and from Tuesday morning in the retailer's high street stores.

The move comes after US retailer Best Buy slashed the price of the TouchPad to just $99, around £60, after HP confirmed that it will not produce any more of the devices and is looking to sell off its hardware division.

Currently only Amazon has made any notable discount to the tablet in the UK, dropping the price from £399 to £312, but the fire sale at Dixons Group underlines just how keen retailers are to get rid of the tablet.

The rush for TouchPads in the US is likely to be mirrored in the UK as consumers unwilling to splash out on an iPad take advantage of the low prices to get their hands on what was a well thought of tablet.

No manufacturer has managed to challenge Apple in the tablet market, as devices retailing at the same price as the iPad often lack the build quality, applications and brand appeal of the Apple tablet.

HP Labs has done some interesting research on the social media industry in China, in particular how it has managed to adapt and thrive according to the unique and at times prohibitive control exerted by the authorities.

The paper, What Trends in Chinese Social Media?, examines micro-blogging service Sina Weibo. This Chinese language site already has over 140 million users, almost to a person from mainland China.

Running some clever analytics software, HP found that, while Twitter trending topics tend to be based on current affairs, content on Sina Weibo is mainly entertainment-based, with re-tweets forming a much larger percentage of posts.

For the more cynical observer, it wouldn't be difficult to discern why Chinese citizens are less likely to post potentially controversial current affairs content which could get them into trouble, and why many favour posting others' content rather than their own.

Or could such content be subject to removal by the government? After all, from 2009-10, 41 per cent of Chinese web sites were removed from the web after a crackdown by the authorities, according to a recent report.

Why should we care? Well, aside from the fact that China will be the largest and most powerful economy in the world in the not too distant future, it already has the largest number of web users on the planet.

Any new tech firm looking for a captive audience must surely consider the potential market of over 420 million users and growing, but also needs to know the peculiar legal, cultural and linguistic constraints that may make expansion east a difficult task.

Apple employees generate a colossal $419,528 of profit each per year, more than any other technology company, according to figures from metrics firm Pingdom.

Cupertino's profit per employee has nearly tripled since 2008, although this is unsurprising considering the runaway success of the iPhone and iPad devices.

Even though Apple charges over the odds for products, and has a fiercely loyal user base, the figures are still impressive.

Meanwhile, fellow tech juggernaut Google came second, its workers generating approximately $336,297 each.

Microsoft made it into a respectable third spot with $244,831 per worker, but may have some explaining to do after it was revealed that its workforce has shrunk by 2,000 since 2008.

Yahoo also made it into the top 10, despite its financial troubles. The firm has actually become more profitable since 2008, its employees generating $83,824 per head compared to $31,199 three years ago.

Bizarrely, though, Yahoo has exactly the same number of employees as it did in 2008, chief executive Carol Bartz having wielded the axe to make sure the figure stays at 13,600.

Cisco, eBay, Adobe, Amazon and Dell were all reported to have lower profits per employee than they did in 2008, but are still well into the black.

As Apple has proved time and again, it takes only one killer product to turn a company's fortunes around.