Palm plans to challenge Apple's iPhone with more than form and style by making application development for its new Pre smartphone open and simple, which the company believes will lead to a rich array of consumer and business apps.Developers looking to write applications for the upcoming Palm Pre should
find it very easy, at least according to Palm’s CEO.
In an interview during the GSMA World Congress in Barcelona,
Spain, Palm CEO
Ed Colligan said the relative ease in developing for the upcoming Palm Pre will
attract a wide range of application developers creating everything from
consumer to business apps.
“We have made it a priority for the new system to be as easy as possible to
develop for,” Colligan was quoted as saying.
Palm is pushing the Pre with much fanfare at the GSMA World Congress,
including a Twitter feed and a video on the Palm site previewing the Pre. In
addition, the company unveiled the European UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications
System) version of the Pre.
The Pre will run the Palm WebOS, a new operating system that uses Mojo, a
new application framework based on the HTML5, CSS
and JavaScript standards, according to the Palm Developer Network site. Of
note, the new OS will support Adobe Flash, providing a richer Web experience
and something not widely available on other mobile devices.
At the GMSA World Congress, Palm announced its participation in Adobe’s Open
Screen Project, a community development project aimed at using its Flash and
Integrated Runtime technologies to create a consistent application interface
across all devices, according to Adobe.
The Palm Mojo SDK, which will be available later this year as a free
download, will
include sample code, documentation and development tools, according to the
site. An Eclipse-based IDE is included, or
users can use their choice of tools to build WebOS applications.
Developed applications will be available via an online app store called the
Palm App Catalog.
Currently there are 30,000 developers who have worked on the previous PalmOS
platform, and Colligan said all developers of mobile applications will be
encouraged to develop for the Pre, regardless of whether they had developed for
Palm previously.
The Pre features a 3.1-inch multitouch screen and a real keyboard, as well
as Wi-Fi, USB, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS
and a 3-megapixel camera. The device is expected to ship in the United
States by the end of the first half of 2009.
Sprint is the exclusive carrier.
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