Motorola is working on its own web-based operating system and this may eventually wind up replacing Android on its future handsets, according to a report.

The report says Motorola has been hiring engineers from top companies like Apple to work on this web-based OS. Motorola is not denying the project but its quick to remind us that Android is its go-to platform right now "Motorola Mobility is committed to Android as an operating system" the company said in an e-mailed statement to InformationWeek.

Of course, the report could be getting it very wrong in terms of this being used to replace Android down the road, as the web-based OS could just be for devices like the Laptop Dock. The idea of these types of accessories is to allow powerful phones like the Atrix 4G to power the large screen and keyboard but the Laptop Dock does have its own software to interact with the Android device.

At this point the existence of a Wi-Fi-only version of the Motorola XOOM will hardly raise any eyebrows, it has leaked plenty of times. However the pricing and availability details that came with the official announcement are more than welcome.

Now the good news is that the budget-minded version of the XOOM is less than 10 days away Motorola says it should hit the shelves on 27th March. The not so cool part is that even with the 3G radio removed, the Honeycomb-running tablet costs $600 for the 32GB version .

If you are interested, the Wi-Fi-only XOOM will be available through "both online and retail store channels" so getting one should not be hard as long as you live in the US. We are yet to see when Motorola will bring this thing to Europe.

Believe it or not Motorola has just released the Android 2.2 update for the original Milestone. At this point most owners have probably either given up on their Motorola Milestones or taken the self-update path, but the patience of the rest has finally been rewarded. You are forgiven for thinking that after so much waiting Gingerbread would have been a more appropriate reward, but an update is great news nonetheless.

What is not exactly great is the message posted on the Motorola website, regarding the update. It states :

"Exhaustive testing process has concluded that users may experience some adverse effects associated with the upgrade which could include slower operation of some phone functions and applications."

Now we are not quite sure what to make of this. Is Motorola saying that according to their own tests the Froyo-running Milestone performs worse than the Eclair-packing version? If that is the case there is obviously something very wrong with the update itself as Froyo brings a notable increase in speed and responsiveness on all other devices that received it. On the positive side, the Froyo update brings in a few new features, including hotspot functionality, Flash-support for the web browser and improved JavaScript performance.

When word of the Motorola Xoom shipping without Flash was released, most of the tech world were baffled at the move. After all, Android one big advantage over iOS was its Flash support. So why would a flagship Android tablet ship without Flash support? Adobe responded that it would be arriving some time in the spring, which really was not too far away from the Xoom’s launch in late February. Today we learned that Flash is updating to version 10.2 and will be available in the Android Market on March 18.

The new update will have enhanced features for Android 3.0 Honeycomb, the version that the Motorola Xoom is running. Adobe said that it was working very closely with Google for this update, so perhaps it wanted to get the update right before releasing it to the public. While its a general release for Android 2.2 Froyo and 2.3 Gingerbread, its only going to be a beta release for Honeycomb on the Xoom.

According to the Adobe blog, here is what we can expect specifically for Flash 10.2 on the tablet:

Hardware accelerated video presentation for H.264 (Android 3.0.1+ only)

Flash Player 10.2 leverages the Stage Video rendering pipeline to enable users of Android 3.0 tablets, like the MOTOROLA XOOM™, to enjoy smooth playback of high-definition Flash video content on the web.   Users will experience reduced CPU usage and higher frame rates for existing H.264 video content.

Deeper integration with the Android browser rendering engine (Android 3.0.1+ only)

Deeper integration of Flash Player and the enhanced Android 3.0 browser delivers faster and better rendering of rich, interactive web content resulting in a browsing experience similar to the desktop.

Flash Player can now render content as part of the web page along with other components such as HTML, images and gif animation. As a result, users will experience:

• Improved scrolling of web pages;

Uncompromised viewing of rich, immersive content in the way intended by the page designer, including support for instances where HTML and other web content is composited over Flash Player rendered content.  Flash Player rendered content will continue to be placed in a separate window on top of HTML in the Android 2.2 and 2.3 browsers, as these browsers do not support the new Android 3.0 browser rendering model.

Motorola have released an update for their Xoom slate. It brings along some "required enhancements" for their next update, which should bring Flash 10.2 to the Xoom.

So basically this is just an half-step forward, but at least we know the direction is right. And there are some minor bugfixes in this update too, including Daylight Savings Time issues, so its effect isnot completely invisible. Plus everyone likes getting software updates.

The upcomming major Xoom update, which will bring Flash 10.2, is labeled as Coming Soon!