ts own tablet computer, dubbed TouchPad, over the summer. "I happen to believe WebOS is a uniquely outstanding operating system and there's no reason to believe the only hardware that can run it is H-P," Apotheker said at The Wall Street Journal's "D9: All Things Digital" conference in southern California. H-P acquired WebOS when it rebooted its mobile device business by purchasing Palm Inc. last year. The company expects to use WebOS in a host of devices, including tablets, printers and computers. Apotheker hinted that WebOS might even have a broader use outside of business and consumer technology. "There are many people who make all kinds of devices, why wouldn't they want to use WebOS?" Apotheker said. "Appliance makers can use WebOS." The strategy potentially puts H-P into competition with a host of technology heavyweights, including Google Inc. (GOOG), which makes the Android mobile operating system,w cases in the U.S. last year and killed about 8,700 people, according to the National Cancer Institute. To be cured, the disease needs to be caught early. "For patients with advanced melanoma, there has been very little progress on improving outcomes for patients," said Lynn Schuchter, leader of the melanoma program at the University of Pennsylvania's Abramson Cancer Center. Late-stage patients typically live six to nine months, and treatment had traditionally been chemotherapy or entering into an experimental clinical trial, Dr. Schuchter said. One of the most watched studies at ASCO will be of ipilimumab, sold as Yervoy by Bristol-Myers. The drug was a focused at last year's ASCO and was approved in March. It attacks cancer by bolstering the body's immune system to fight the disease. A study released last year showed Yervoy extended average overall survival to 10 months from nearly 6.5 months for patients that didn't get the drug. That study was in previously treated patients, while the results at ASCO test the drug in newly diagnosed patients that are also taking chemotherapy. Yervoy was the first drug approved for advanced melanoma in more than a decade. Most Wall Street analysts project annual sales to eventually exceed $1 billion. A Bristol-Myers spokeswoman highlighted that Yervoy is the only approved advanced melanoma drug to show a significant improvement in overall survival. Another important study examines a drug from Roche's Genentech and Daiichi Sankyo's Plexxikon unit that uses a very targeted approach to treating melanoma. The drug, vemurafenib, blocks a genetic mutation known as BRAF, which may help the disease grow. An interim analysis of the study found that patients lived longer and showed improved progression free survival when taking the drug. After the finding, the patients on chemotherapy were offered the option to begin taking the drug. Roche, which developed a diagnostic test for BRAF, recently submitted the drug and test for approval in both the U.S. and Europe. Chris Bowden, vice president of oncology product development at Genentech, said enrollment in the clinical trials was very fast and regulators have been interested in the data because of the lack of treatment options. "We have worked really hard with regulators to go as fast as we can," Dr. Bowden said. Among other notable ASCO prese