CEO Meg Whitman said that HP together with PSG will be stronger.

Eventual changes to webOS hardware have not been mentioned.

This statement confirms a change of the decision made by the former CEO of the company, Leo Apotheker, in August. The general feeling was that his forced exit was determined by this particular decision. Many interpreted that Apotheker tried to recreate a business model of SAP, his previous employer, from the inside. Whitman produced confusion when saying that plans were still viable and the problem was not the decision itself but its execution.

Hewlett Packard’s rivals are believed to have hoped to the company splitting off the PC division. The group would have become a target for a sale and they could have bought market share. By distancing the new created company from the Hewlett Packard name, the PSG would become weaker, less familiar, and the safety net provided by the larger HP in case of trouble would be eliminated.

Many had failed to understand why HP would willingly give up what is considered probably the most successful PC group in the world. Apotheker had acknowledged that a certain iPad effect was visible in cutting into HP’s notebook and netbook sales. However, the company still leads in worldwide PC market share and is not seeing a rapid drop like Acer and other netbook-heavy companies do.

Apple as well as its competitors are lining up for a release of curved-glass devices for the first-half of 2012. Apple would apply the new technology to its iPad or iPhone and present it in that period of the year, although it was unveiling new iPhones in June and shipping them in June or July. The size of the iPad might make this feature prohibitive.

There were rumors of iPhones with curved-glass screens persisting since May at least. They were pointing to the iPhone 5 and not to its successor. However, many analysts presume that the version for this year will keep a flat screen.

Devices with curved glass are not new for the industry. It is known that Dell tried to equip its Venue Pro with convex glass as well as the regular Venue sporting Android. While some people consider this feature as being purely cosmetic, it could lead to rounded devices, looking more organic.

In spite of Intel’s slower approach, many of the latest notebook computers currently offer USB 3.0 connections. The standard supports data transfer speeds of almost ten times faster than USB 2.0, while also providing more power to attached devices.

A company representative declared for CNET that AMD offers USB 3.0 support to its A75 and A70M Fusion chipsets, which have recently started shipping.

There is no employee from the plant missing or injured seriously. Some members in the board of directors, attending a meeting in Iwaki, started driving to Tokyo the very night of the earthquake. The Kureha factory is relatively unscathed, but the Onahama Port was seriously affected and delivery of supplies needed by Kureha, such as vinyl chloride and salt, is stopped. The factory may have only a limited quantity of PVDF in stock. Therefore, the world’s supply of PVDF is affected.

Takao Iwasaki, CEO of Kureha, said that the recent catastrophe is accelerating the plans to transfer more production overseas to the United States and China. Apart from reducing the threat of a natural disaster, the strategy aims helping Japanese companies minimize operating costs related to changes in the yen. As Japan has an economy highly driven by import/export operations, fluctuations in its currency are supposed to affect both businesses and buyers.

Apple’s move may however create a ripple effect, as touchscreen panel builders consider the hikes may hurt companies that build phones and tablets for rival platforms like Android. En advantaged by economies of scale and keeps its overall cost low. In contrast, Motorola and other companies, which produce devices in smaller series, would be forced to accept lower profit margins.

Part of the success Apple had in keeping a relatively low price for its iPad has been attributed to its deals for displays, flash memory and the other parts it often uses. These deals were on long term and allowed Apple to have an overall lower price and be less vulnerable to spikes in prices, like those triggered by important changes in supply versus demand or by crises like the recent Japanese earthquake.

Shortages that the iPad 2 has experienced have been significant in the United States after the March 11th launch, but now there are signs they might be returning to normal. The iPad 2’s international release is on track for the announced date.

Peterson said that the new project is mysterious and samples would only be available in person. If this is a real project, Peterson likely would not have any right to discuss his work at all due to discretion, which he recognizes by referring to it as being confidential.

It is yet unknown if the console is an entirely new Xbox or just a peripheral. The company has always suggested that the Xbox 360 would have a very long development cycle, but has never mentioned when it would expect a revamp. The 2015 date should keep the company’s Xbox 360 on the market for almost a full decade; this makes it one of the longest-serving consoles to represent the present generation.

Sony has usually kept its own consoles for a decade, but only after having introduced a replacement five years later. The company’s PS3 could also get a longer life cycle. The 2015 time frame may leave Sony the opportunity to ship first.

It hasn’t yet been revealed when the 4TB hard drives will start shipping. When they do, the HDDs will be part of Samsung’s Spinpoint EcoGreen series. Therefore, they will benefit from 5,400RPM rotational speeds, 32MB of cache and a SATA 6Gbps interface. The company also claimed that its technology would sometime allow for 10TB drives with several modifications, even if this will not happen in the near future.

The release of 4TB drives is expected to lower the pricing of 3TB drives (these are already available from Hitachi, Western Digital and Seagate).

Except the primary features which will be standard for the device, the company highlights the IQon’s open innovation strategy, encouraging third-party developers. Access to specific APIs for the car will be available to participants, connecting to about 500 or more signals measuring data (for example, car speed, GPS location, yaw rate, driver workload, engine speed, steering wheel angle, temperatures, torque, barometric pressure, but also the location of the sun).

The IQon system can now be previewed in the Saab PhoeniX concept car, which can be seen at the Geneva Motor Show.

The emphasis on the speed, but not necessarily Light Peak, could reflect the ultimate strategy of Apple and would also support the use of this technology. The 10Gbps of bandwidth of Light Peak, piped through the Cinema Display, could make it support USB, audio, the display signal and also other interfaces through a unique cable. This way, Thunderbolt is a totally new approach.

The above mentioned box shots also present specifications for Apple’s 13-inch MacBook Pro. If true, they could be more and at the same time less than what was expected. Apple could start with a 2.3GHz Core i5 processor, a major leap over the Core 2 Duo as well as the rumoured Core i3 at 2.1GHz. The expected resolution of 1,440×900 would be replaced with a 1,280×800 panel, but it would keep the rumoured 320GB hard drive. The HD 3000 graphics of Intel, essential for the Sandy Bridge chip architecture, is supposed to replace NVIDIA and should provide almost similar performance to low-end dedicated graphics.

The launch of the new MacBook Pro is expected to also bring 15- and 17-inch versions, already anticipated, and upgraded to Sandy Bridge Core i5 and i7, together with new dedicated video, probably from AMD. Some rumors have circulated, related to a built-in 16GB SSD boot drive and also up to 1TB disk space on these larger computers. An option to provide a second SSD instead of the DVD burner is also possible.

Indications about Light Peak’s timing may have been released from Intel itself. It had pushed back the launch to 2012 several times, but recently hinted to have moved it up for some reasons. David Perlmutter, architecture lead, has claimed that the technology is ready to be used, but with copper instead of fiber optic pipes, in order to attain the desired speed. There were suspicions that Apple had helped to accelerate the technology, since it was providing input on this standard by itself.

It is known the Light Speed is twice as fast as USB 3.0 and also has multiple possible functions. It is expected that most implementations use it to internal interconnections sharing input from different connection types like USB and FireWire, by means of a simple cable. Intel hopes to get a dedicated port and use it for faster single connections or share multiple outside devices on a single link. Light Peak could be used by Apple to get rid of internal bottlenecks, but an external port could be provided for specialty purposes like the attachment of an external breakout box for ports.

These assertions have not yet been commented by Intel, but if tied to the MacBook Pro they may be made public even next week.