Today Palm announced its new smartphone, the Pre, and just as importantly, its long-awaited new software platform, WebOS. Reading the Engadget live blog on the announcement and watching videos on Gizmodo, I am quite impressed by what I saw. Not only is the hardware slick, the software is too. Wall Street liked it as well: on a day when the Dow Jones fell 0.31%, Palm’s stock shot up 35%.
And in a master stroke, native apps for WebOS are written in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, the same technologies used to create web sites. This dramatically lowers the barrier to entry, and makes it much more likely that developers will create webOS apps, something Palm desparately needs.
Alas, I have already switched from Palm to the iPhone, and at this point I don’t think I’ll be going back. But the smartphone market is still growing, and I’m rooting for Palm to make a comeback, if only to give the iPhone some much needed competition. Will it be enough? I’m not sure, but I am sure that if Palm hadn’t done everything it showed today, it would have been doomed.
I agree, it looks quite nice and programming model sounds like a great idea. The question is are they too late, too expensive, and does it work like the pictures