LG Electronics has acquired the webOS operating system - originally created by Palm four years ago - from HP. This includes the webOS source code, documentation, engineering talent and related websites.

In addition, HP will also license LG to use patent that cover system and user interface technologies with its webOS products.

Last year HP decided to stop producing tablets and phones that ran its webOS mobile operating system, later deciding to contribute its webOS software to the open source community.

It’s now released the first full version of the operating system, Open webOS 1.0, which can be ported to new devices.

This week’s podcast from The Fonecast starts with impressive quarterly results from Apple, along with figures from Samsung, Motorola and Nokia as well. We then move on to some of the other stories that have been hitting the headlines, including O2’s UK privacy problem and a new ‘unlimited internet’ tariff from T-Mobile.

As usual, you can listen to this week’s podcast on our website audio player, via iTunes, by using our RSS feed or by downloading the MP3.

Apple, Samsung and Motorola have all published their quarterly results. We talk about these differing figures before moving on to O2's privacy problem, T-Mobile's new unlimited tariff, HP's plans for webOS and last year's growth in tablet sales.

Mark Bridge writes:

If you want a big money story from the last few days, you want Apple. The company announced its highest quarterly revenue ever, hitting $46.33 billion (£29.66 billion) with record quarterly profits of $13.06 billion. That’s probably enough money to buy the moon, assuming Newt Gingrich is prepared to sell it – or, in the real world, is one of the biggest quarterly profits ever.