If you do, then you might be using a Palm OS device right now.  Palm has been slowly dying for a couple of years now.  I guess the good thing is that they have realized it, but did they realize it too late?  To plug some holes in their business, they licensed Windows Mobile.  So now they just confused their customers.  I work as a support technician, and I constantly see people that are trying to buy Palm software for their Treo 800W or Treo Pro because it has the Palm name on it.  Now Palm is going to confuse their customers even more when they find out that there is (at this point) no upgrade path to allow all of their Palm OS programs to run on their new WebOS software.

As a developer, do you want to throw your support behind a company like Palm?

Well…there are a few things to consider.  One of the big reasons that I think developers should really be looking at the WebOS and Palm Pre is because Palm cannot really afford to fail.  Palm has to put everything they have into WebOS.  They have already declared the Palm OS dead, so they do not need to spend any time there anymore.  Don’t let the Gartner numbers fool you…the main reason they saw growth in 2008 was because they sold the Centros for dirt cheap on almost every major carrier.  They do not really need to spend much time on their Treo line because they are all going to be running Windows Mobile, so that will be Microsoft’s problem.  All they are going to have on the OS front is WebOS. 

The Palm Pre, the first device with WebOS, is supposed to be released in the first half of 2009.  Palm has given a select few developers access to their Mojo SDK, but it has not been released to the public yet.  They have given some glimpses into what programming will be like on WebOS by releasing the “rough cut” to the first 2 chapters of their WebOS book.  While I believe this is a very good sign, it would still be nice to see the SDK available with enough time for plenty of developers to release fart apps quality apps when the Pre is released.

WebOS is based on web standards that are supposed to tie into the hardware using the Mojo SDK.  I think everyone should be excited about this because they are really going to make it easy for new developers that have a web development background to get into WebOS.  These are not going to be web applications like we saw for the first beta year of the iPhone.  Palm has stated that these applications are going to reside on the device and are able to store data using HTML5 standards.  I hope everyone can agree that web standards are good.  So think of what Google has done with Gears, throw in some Palm style, and let the developers run wild.

Recommendation:  If you know HTML/CSS/Javascript…start thinking of app ideas.  If you do not…learn…and start thinking of app ideas.  You might also want to start saving up for a shiny new Pre when it comes out…if you can deal with having Sprint as your carrier.

One more thing…if your app ideas have anything to do with bodily functions or noises…ignore this post and go download the iPhone SDK, kthxbye.

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