Palm announced its new Pre handset at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. While the announcement of yet another smart phone is hardly news, this will be the first to use Palm's new operating system dubbed WebOS (formerly known as "Nova"). The handset will first be offered by Sprint, and so it is clearly starting this race with one foot in a bucket. It does feature a touch screen as well as a full QWERTY keyboard that is exposed by sliding the face upwards.Palm is a veritable legend in the mobile community, having pioneered the first wildly successful handheld computer, the Palm Pilot and the Palm O/S (we won't mention Apple's "Newton"). What the Palm developers recognized from the start was that a mobile device is different from a desktop. They figured out that a mobile device should be really good at a few things and focused on doing those core tasks simply and easily. That vision was manifest in Graffiti text entry and the four fixed function buttons on the original Palm devices. The case study in ignoring those basic design principles is called "Windows Mobile"!
As Palm hasn't let anyone touch the thing, we still have no idea if WebOS will live up to its legacy. It can reportedly run several applications simultaneously, and touch screen supports many of the features popularized by the Apple iPhone interface.
In the current environment, Palm's Web OS will be up against several strong platforms and a smart-phone buyer who will be looking for every excuse to put off buying a new gadget. Many of the original Palm zealots have moved to other platforms, with RIM being at the top of that list; that "Do a few things well" mantra has not been lost on the Canadians.
So the mobile device O/S constellation that includes RIM, iPhone, Symbian, Android, LiMo and Windows "More-Bile" will now have another star. When you look at the list and recognize the millions of people who have already signed on to one supplier or another, you can see that Palm is going to have to hit a home run to even have a shot at being a factor. We wish them luck.
