It’s all about the smartphone these days, and with the countdown to the launch of the new iPhone 4G, the growing number of mobile apps across various app stores and markets a plethora of new devices and features launching monthly, mobile seems to be trending up.
But the laws of physics dictate that whatever is up must come down, something being painfully experienced by Palm of late.
Palm, once a name synonymous with PDA devices, has made its way down a heck of a long path to reach the sorry point it now finds itself in.
To be sure, PDA devices once promised to bring us all into the 21st century, but are now part and parcel of all mobile devices and smartphones in particular.
Palm only jumped on the PDA bandwagon towards the end of the PDA era, evolving into smartphones and seeing some success with the likes of the Palm Centro.
But today Palm is facing a crisis, with the company up for sale and ambitious CEO Jon Rubinstein yet to give up.
What the future holds for Palm nobody knows, but one thing is abundantly clear in my mind, and that is the fact that the concept of the WebOS operating system must not die.
Despite the troubles it finds itself in, Palm is still desperately trying to convince developers its OS is worthwhile, regardless of low sales and the near zero money making potential.
The firm is also planning on selling licenses of its OS to 3rd party device manufacturers, a step which may help Palm gain a small percentage of market share. Bearing in mind that Apple only holds about one percent of the smartphone OS market, this is not an insignificant step.
By licensing out WebOS and persuading developers not to give up on the platform, it seems WebOS may just be destined to survive, in some form or other, maintaining the core value of the system – the web part.
WebOS could even be the answer to the whole native versus web apps debate, with the web getting some reinforcement from new technology like HTML5.
Moreover, current smartphone master Apple seems to trust the web enough to launch its iAd advertising network.
Adding in buzz words like cloud computing, social networking and live information flow is also enough to persuade most anyone that mobile devices should indeed be “web powered” and that WebOS –the first OS to pioneer that system – should not be thrown on the scrap heap of mobile history.
There’s plenty of mobile web development to come, and I for one hope WebOS will be around to lead the cavalry charge.
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Harel Shattenstein is a freelance contributor to RCR Unplugged, residing in Tel Aviv, Israel.
