The information provides a powerful tool for marketers but raises new privacy concerns. Even as Americans browsing the Internet grow more accustomed to having every move tracked, combining that information with a detailed accounting of their movements in the real world has long been considered particularly sensitive.

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But even so, for all the talk about cyberwar, it didn’t come close to eclipsing the amount of financially motivated crime that took place in the digital realm, a new study by telecom giant Verizon has found.

In its ninth annual survey of data breach investigations, which will be formally released tomorrow, Verizon found that old-fashioned financial motivations accounted for 75 percent of computer security incidents. State-sponsored attacks accounted for 20 percent. And, as you might expect, the victims are the organizations that move or hold a lot of money: Financial organizations were targets 37 percent of the time, followed by retailers (24 percent) and manufacturing, transportation and utilities (20 percent).

The study’s sample size included 621 confirmed data breaches and more than 47,000 reported computer security incidents in 27 countries and territories. Verizon has been gathering the data for nine years, and now has records encompassing 2,500 data breaches and 1.2 billion compromised records.

Attacks by outside entities accounted for the majority of breaches, while only 14 percent were attributed to insiders and 1 percent to business partners; 71 percent of breaches targeted user devices and 54 percent were aimed at servers. Perhaps most troubling: Two thirds of the breaches reported required a month or more to discover.

The benefit of a study like this is that it happens at all. Since most large companies and organizations aren’t usually willing to disclose when they’ve been attacked — most have — and suffered a breach that actually cost them some money, it’s rare to see this sort of trend data gathered up in one place.

One interesting thing I noted as I scanned the report. For all the security-related anxiety that seems to have arisen during the two years or so around the “bring your own device” trend in the enterprise — where employers let workers use their personal smartphones or tablets or notebooks to access corporate networks — there seem to have been practically no BYOD-related security incidents. As one sidebar in the report put it:

“The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend is a current topic of debate and planning in many organizations. Unfortunately, we don’t have much hard evidence to offer from our breach data. We saw only one breach involving personally-owned devices in 2011 and a couple more in 2012. We’ll keep watching.”

Intel shares have traded lower since last Thursday, when the market research firms IDC and Gartner said they had tracked one of the largest year-on-year declines in sales of personal computers since records have been kept. Intel is the largest supplier of microprocessors to PC manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Apple, and it’s hard to see how much good news it can possibly bring to the table today.

Analysts are expecting Intel to report a profit of 41 cents per share on sales of $12.6 billion, and missing either would be seen as more or less proving that the PC market is in a state of permanent decline. So would a weak outlook for the current quarter, for which analysts currently expect earnings of 40 cents on $12.9 billion in sales.

There are other aspects to Intel’s business. It has a healthy data center business selling chips for use in servers, but out of more than $53 billion in sales last year, $34 billion, or more than 61 percent, was in its “client,” or PC, unit, while the data center group accounted for about $10.7 billion.

In the past, Intel executives have quarreled with the analyst firms, and said it was seeing more promising conditions in emerging markets. Indeed, in prior years there has been a disconnect between the dour pronouncements of Gartner and IDC and the peppier market conditions that Intel would later describe in its financial results in places like Brazil, Indonesia and Russia. In more recent quarters, the differences between their views have narrowed.

Aside from PCs, Intel has some new ideas that it hopes will kick its data center business into a higher gear. And it certainly has higher hopes about selling more chips for use in phones and tablets, but as yet they’re only hopes. It also plans to launch a TV product later this year.

Aside from the numbers, expect some questions — and maybe even some answers, but probably nothing conclusive yet — about the search for a replacement for CEO Paul Otellini. The smart money says the choice will be an internal one (here’s a rundown on the contenders), though there’s a slim chance that Intel’s board might be in the mood to surprise everyone and name an outsider. But don’t bet any money you can’t afford to lose on that.

I just got off the phone with Bill Veghte, executive VP for software and solutions at HP, and Dr. Skott Ahn, president and CEO of LG Electronics’ mobile operations.

Veghte told me that the acquisition grew out of a series of discussions that HP and LG held around a potential partnership. It wasn’t long before LG simply offered to acquire webOS outright. The deal, Veghte said, will include the source code, documentation, a license to all the associated patents (HP won’t be letting those go) and the remaining user experience team. People associated with the cloud services infrastructure that had been part of the webOS operations will stay with HP. Veghte wouldn’t comment on exactly how many people will be moving from HP to LG. Financial terms aren’t being disclosed.

Ahn told me that webOS will become a “core technology of LG,” and that “we would like to incorporate it first into our Smart TV platform, and then in the future in other devices.”

What other devices? Probably not phones and tablets. LG is pretty firmly in the Android camp there. But there are other appliances that might benefit from webOS, Ahn said, like refrigerators and other appliances and also smart signage.

So there you have it: webOS will appear first in TVs, and then perhaps later in other household appliances from LG.

LG has a technology called Smart ThinQ that it embeds in some models of refrigerators, laundry machines and kitchen ranges. I found a video from CES demonstrating what Smart ThinQ is like now. So maybe down the road you’ll see the legacy of webOS there.

Update: The official press release just moved. Here it is:

LG Electronics Acquires webOS from HP to Enhance Smart TV

LG to License HP IP, Integrate webOS Technology into Next-Generation Devices

SEOUL, Korea, and PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb. 25, 2013 – LG Electronics Inc. has acquired the webOS operating system technology from HP, the companies announced today.

To support its next-generation Smart TV technology, LG has entered into a definitive agreement with HP to acquire the source code, associated documentation, engineering talent and related websites associated with webOS. As part of the transaction, LG also will receive licenses under HP’s intellectual property (IP) for use with its webOS products, including patents acquired from Palm covering fundamental operating system and user interface technologies now in broad use across the industry.

Today’s announcement paves the way for continued innovation on the webOS platform and on LG’s roadmap of innovative solutions for many years to come, while allowing HP to focus its resources on strategic business opportunities such as cloud computing.

“This groundbreaking development demonstrates LG’s commitment to investing in talent and research in Silicon Valley, one of the world’s innovation hotbeds. It creates a new path for LG to offer an intuitive user experience and Internet services across a range of consumer electronics devices,” said Skott Ahn, president and chief technology officer, LG Electronics Inc. “The open and transparent webOS technology offers a compelling user experience that, when combined with our own technology, will pave the way for future innovations using the latest Web technologies.”

Ahn explained that LG Electronics’ investment in webOS technology and its acquisition of the innovation team’s R&D capabilities are expected to extend LG’s leadership in bringing Internet services directly to consumer electronics devices. “Integrated with LG, this team will be the heart and soul of the new LG Silicon Valley Lab, focused on bringing innovative technology solutions to market through the most popular platforms for sharing and consuming content and experiences,” he said. With the transaction, LG will add the Sunnyvale and San Francisco sites to its global R&D locations, in addition to its existing U.S. sites in San Jose and Chicago.

Also under the agreement:

LG will assume stewardship of the open source projects of Open WebOS and Enyo. HP will retain ownership of all of Palm’s cloud computing assets, including source code, talent, infrastructure and contracts.

HP will continue to support Palm users.

“WebOS and its associated community deliver market leading platforms for the next generation of connected devices. We are constantly looking for opportunities to accelerate the delivery of this platform from the community,” said Bill Veghte, HP’s chief operating officer. “LG’s track record of innovation and broad distribution provides this opportunity, while enabling HP to accelerate our Cloud efforts. In particular, with the cloud assets that will remain with HP, we will focus on delivering innovative solutions that will enable our enterprise customers to mobilize their workforce.”

HP and LG do not expect this transaction to have a material impact on either company’s financial statements. Terms were not disclosed.

The San Diego-based company is best known for baseband processors, which manage the overall chore of communicating over cellular networks. These are digital chips, handling data in the form of ones and zeros.

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World-wide sales to end users totaled 1.75 billion units in 2012, a 1.7 percent decline from 2011 sales, Gartner said, adding that fourth-quarter 2012 smartphone sales reached 207.7 million units, 38.3 percent higher than the same period last year.

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The moves represent a big change from just a few years ago, when customers mostly used their phones to check bank balances or find the nearest branch. Customers now are manipulating their gadgets to deposit checks and move money between accounts.

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The Lifeline program — begun in 1984 to ensure that poor people aren’t cut off from jobs, families and emergency services — is funded by charges that appear on the monthly bills of every landline and wireless-phone customer. Payouts under the program have shot up from $819 million in 2008, as more wireless carriers have persuaded regulators to let them offer the service.

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The Finnish handset maker, once the world leader, posted a €202 million ($269.0 million) net profit in the quarter, a considerable improvement from the €1.07 billion loss it recorded a year earlier.

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Image via mtkang

And while many retailers, especially smaller privately held companies, were bullish on the number of transactions coming from mobile, other larger companies — especially Amazon — have remained mum on the subject.

But in a report today, Citi Analyst Neil Doshi estimates that Amazon is generating $3 billion to $5 billion in annual sales from mobile devices.

If this is the case, the question that has to be answered is, is this significant?

It’s really not.

Take a look at the facts. Based on Amazon’s 2012 revenue forecast, the company’s net sales will total somewhere around $60 billion in 2012, which means that mobile sales will equate to 5 percent to 8 percent of total dollars spent on Amazon.

When asked about his estimate, Doshi called it “conservative,” noting that in 2012, Amazon’s percentage of mobile transactions could be as high as 10 percent. The estimate also takes into account only purchases made on Amazon.com from mobile, and not digital downloads from Kindle devices, for example.

Granted, moving the needle at a company the size of Amazon is extremely difficult, but that’s still comparatively low when looking at others in the space.

Take a look at eBay. It’s anticipating mobile sales to hit $10 billion in 2012, which is at least twice as much as Doshi’s conservative estimate for Amazon. That could equate to nearly 16 percent of eBay’s 2012 revenue — which is double what it was in 2011, and double Amazon’s estimated percentage in 2012.

Doshi provided other comparison points for some of the leading online players: About 15 percent to 25 percent of Google’s search queries are coming from mobile, as are 15 percent to 20 percent of page views on LinkedIn and 40 percent of Walgreens’ online prescription refills.

Amazon is trailing here, but given the Seattle company’s huge investment in mobile, that’s hard to believe.

If Doshi’s estimate took into account digital downloads, the numbers would be a lot higher. Take e-books, for example. It would be logical if a majority of the e-books being purchased are occurring on Amazon’s own Kindle e-readers and tablets.

Additionally, it has invested heavily in building its own app store on Android devices, which sells digital content, such as games. Amazon also has a dozen or more mobile applications available across several platforms, including iOS, Android and its own Kindle devices, which helps consumers shop its homepage in a streamlined fashion.

During the 2011 Christmas season, Amazon launched a mobile promotion that encouraged consumers to compare prices in a retailer’s store by using its bar-code scanning technology on its phone app. Anyone who used the app to scan a bar code received up to $5 off on any purchases made. The purpose was to increase usage of its mobile apps, but it seriously backfired when local retailers accused Amazon of encouraging “showrooming,” in which consumers test products out in the store, but end up buying them online.

Since the PR blunder, Amazon has been especially quiet about its mobile successes, so it’s really hard to tell if the 5 percent to 8 percent range is even close to accurate.

But beyond just knowing the percentage of revenue coming from mobile, it’s equally difficult to define success. As Doshi points out, it’s hard to know whether mobile results in incremental revenue, or if it is cannibalizing purchases that would have otherwise occurred online.

He writes:

[T]here has been a relatively healthy debate around the extent of Mobile Internet usage that’s really incremental, and accordingly the extent of monetization opportunities that are completely incremental (and do not cannibalize traditional desktop / PC Internet usage).

Doshi adds that people tend to use phones while they are out during the day and tablet usage spikes from 7 to 10 pm when they are on the couch — in other words, mobile usage is occurring when they aren’t in front of a PC and therefore could be incremental.

In all, Doshi believes Amazon and eBay are “likely to benefit from increased sales activity from mobile devices.”

That’s obvious. After all, purchases made on the PC and mobile monetize the same. However, that’s not the case for content companies, which find it much harder to generate revenue from advertising on the smaller screens.