Palm's Secret Weapon for the Pre

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Comparisons to the iPhone

A dearth of competing high-profile announcements in the runup to the announcement of the Pre and its software also benefited Palm. Apple had no smartphone news at the Macworld show, held in January. And of the thousands of product announcements at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where Palm was to unveil its new phone, none did much to steal Pre's thunder. "It looks like the Palm experience could be on par with the iPhone experience," says Martijn van Tilburg, a partner with design consultancy Artefact.

Developers say Palm made another wise decision: It adopted widely known technology standards, enabling millions of Web programmers to write apps for WebOS. Rivals such as Research In Motion and Nokia require developers to use special software tools and methods. To write for iPhone apps, programmers must know how to write for the Mac. "Palm has really made it very simple to develop for its platform," says NPD analyst Ross Rubin.

And like Apple and RIM, Palm was building both the hardware and the software; so it was able to make the many technical trade-offs needed to achieve the best performance and the fewest glitches. Microsoft, by contrast, licenses software to phone makers, who in turn may or may not deliver a top-notch experience.

Support from Developers

Within months, Palm was a crowd favorite among developers. After all, the company had done more than any other to establish a market for applications for mobile devices. Back in 2000, some 70,000 firms were creating programs for Palm's groundbreaking Palm Pilot PDA.

Of course, Palm still has everything to prove. If the WebOS turns out buggy or the Pre turns out to be clunky, developer support will wane as fast as it waxed. Palm has yet to announce pricing for the Pre, or how much of each application purchase it will keep for itself. And until Palm lands carrier deals beyond Sprint Nextel (S), rival products from Apple, Nokia, Microsoft, and RIMM give access to larger pools of customers. "If Palm can sell millions of devices, it will open up the floodgates," says Cassidy Lackey, vice-president of mobile app distributor Handmark. "But they've got to prove there is a software economy out there."

Ironically, some developers see Palm's desperate straits as an advantage. Google's Android has a lot of potential, but winning the smartphone wars is not a do-or-die proposition for a company that commands more than 60% of Web searches. "There are a lot of people rooting for Palm," says Rob Hoxie, a manager with DataViz, a developer of mobile apps for office workers. Critically for Palm, many of those cheerleaders are adept in writing software.

Burrows is a senior writer for BusinessWeek, based in Silicon Valley.