Palm
may have once been at the top of the smartphone heap, but in recent years saw
its mobile-device star eclipsed by the likes of Research in Motion’s BlackBerry
and Apple’s iPhone.
However, the company is hoping that its upcoming
Palm Pre smartphone will help it regain respect in the industry – and in a
further bid to integrate itself, is boasting that it’s made the Pre the easiest
possible platform on which to develop new applications.
The
smartphone was first rolled out for public view at the 2009 International CES
in Las Vegas.
"We have made it a priority for the new system to be as
easy as possible to develop for," Ed Colligan, CEO
of Palm, was quoted as saying at the Mobile World Congress in Spain
on Wednesday.
The Pre’s operating system is the new Palm WebOS; according
to the Palm Developer Network (developer.palm.com), "Palm [WebOS] applications
are easy to write using Mojo, a new application framework based on the HTML5, CSS
and JavaScript standards."
Palm will offer apps for the device through an online store,
the Palm App Catalog, which will go head-to-head against Apple’s iPhone App
Store.
Palm
has a major advantage in smartphone development in the form of Jon Rubinstein,
who joined the company after leaving Apple in 2006. Considered integral to the
development of many Apple products, including the iMac and the iPod, Rubinstein
devoted his expertise to the Pre.
That, according to some analysts, could make all the difference in Palm's fortunes in 2009.
"Palm is the new comeback kid. They know that they’ve got
one last chance to remain credible with the market, and that’s why there were
all those delays in getting this out in the first place," Philippe Winthrop, an
analyst with Strategy Analytics, said in an interview. "There are a lot of
roots from the pedigree of Jon Rubinstein and the rest of the people who came
from Apple, but everything I’ve seen shows they have their own take on it."
One integral aspect of the Pre’s design is the presence of
both a 3.1-inch multitouch screen and a real keyboard. The smartphone will also
feature Wi-Fi, USB, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS,
and a built-in 3-megapixel camera.
The Pre is slated to hit the U.S.
market by the end of the first half of 2009, with Palm pairing with Sprint as a
service provider. No retail price has been set.
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Enterprise Mobility News & Reviews 
