Samsung has surpassed Apple as the world’s biggest buyer of semiconductors, according to Gartner. The Korean company’s hugely popular smartphones, such as the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note II, led to a 29% surge in chip purchases in 2012, taking its semiconductor spending past that of any other company.

You wouldn’t normally associate HP devices with the Android or iOS platforms, but the company’s latest gadget plays nicely with them both. It’s called the Pocket Playlist, and it allows you to stream all of your media wirelessly to all your smartphones and tablets. It boasts 32GB of internal storage, and it can stream to up to five devices simultaneously.

Research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) has revealed that “smart connected device” shipments — which includes computers, smartphones, and tablets — reached a record high during the third quarter of 2012, largely thanks to Apple and Samsung. The pair’s hugely popular devices helped the market grow 27.1% year-on-year as it reached a record 303.6 million shipments valued at over $140 billion.

The Android community went cuckoo over the HP Touchpad back when HP was nearly giving them away. Since then, the dev community has managed to turn the 10-inch webOS tablet into an Ice Cream Sandwich touting workhorse. Many of you tried hard to pick one up, going store to store and looking online, but never quite managing to score one at the low $99 price. Well, we’ve got some semi-good news for you: woot’s deal of the day happens to be the HP TouchPad 32GB Wi-Fi Tablet.

Remember HP’s fiasco with the Slate, then the TouchPad? You’d think the company would run from the tablet market like a Silicon Valley investor with his hair on fire — but you’d be wrong.