TamsPalm – the Palm OS / web OS Blog

Krusell is a huge Swedish manufacturer of protective cases. Their top list tends to be somehwhat representative for “average users” – and saw some severe changes this month.

RIM fell out, Palm didn’t get in (no wonder due to European focus)….and Sony Ericsson has gone amiss too:

1. (3) Nokia 6300
2. (-) Apple iPhone 3G
3. (-) HTC Touch Diamond 2
4. (2) Nokia 3109
5. (-) Nokia E51
6. (1) Nokia 5800
7. (5) Nokia E71
8. (6) HTC Touch HD
9. (-) HTC Magic
10. (-)HTC Touch Pro2

11. (4) Samsung SGH-i900/i910 Omnia

() = Last month’s position.

Last month Nokia took a Grand Slam by taking all Top 3 positions at Krusell’s best seller list for May. The list in June also gives an impression something is happening in the market. Nokia takes 5 out of 10 positions, HTC takes 4 and Apple one. Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson are all out of the list.

To me it is surprising even the previous best seller Omnia had to leave the list this month, says Ulf Sandberg MD at Krusell. Yet another surprise is that everybody in the industry always talks about how short the lifecycles of mobile phones have become. This month’s No 1, Nokia 6300, was introduced in February 2007 in Krusell’s assortment and is now back on the No 1 position 28 months later, he ends.

MobileRead’s Bob Russell managed to undig these images some time ago – they show two Palm OS Cobalt smartphones which were developed by a Singapore-based company called Oswin:

Looking at the specifications, I really have to wonder why these two never hit the road – back when they were to be announced, they definitely would have been two of the hottest smartphones on the market (especially the QWERTY one). Unfortunately, it looks like the company behind these devices has long gone belly-up…which means that we couldn’t ask them even if we wanted to..,.

People who own more than one handset can tell a tale of the charger eekers – every manufacturer has at least one (usually two or more) incompatible charger types.

This is not only annoying (extra weight), but also bad for the environment. As such things tend to attract EU regulators attention, manufacturers had to act – Yahoo Tech reports the following:

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The agreement by Nokia, Sony Ericsson and other industry majors will mean phones compatible with standard charging devices are available in Europe from next year, said the EU executive, which has pushed for such a deal.

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The Commission said the agreement would involve the creation of an EU norm, and that the new generation of mobile phones would use a standard micro-USB socket to ensure compatibility.

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According to them, the situation will go even further: chargers and handsets will be unbundled one day (which would lead to even lower handset prices).

Even though I personally prefer MiniUSB as I feel it handles better, MicroUSB nevertheless seems to be a pretty robust solution. My Nokia XPressMusic 5800 is still alive and kicking, and Nokia’s large-scale roll-out has started with the Nokia N85 (review here)…

Palm’s Pre recently had a pretty annoying security hole regarding the installation of applications via an email – while this was extremely helpful for homebrew heads, the security implications are pretty clear.

Palm thus was obliged to fix the little loophole – which is exactly what version 1.0.4 of the OS does:

New applications

No new applications in update 1.0.4
Feature changes to existing applications

This release addresses several security issues with Palm webOS software.

Note We’d like to thank Townsend Ladd Harris for his help in identifying some of the issues addressed in this release. Individuals interested in contacting Palm to report suspected security issues can find more information at palm.com/security.

P.S. According to various sources, the update does not affect already installed applications. So get them apps now, dudes

I have absolutely no idea why the folks at MotionApps chose to use a bluescreen rather than a fatal alert for program errors – but they did that for one reason or the other.

According to photoframed, fixing it is as easy as deleting two readme files – hit the URL below for the full scoop:
http://blog.photoframd.com/2009/06/28/solution-to-motionapps-blue-screen-of-death-on-the-palm-pre/

Parker and Marshall Minardo, most famous in the PalmOS world for the Saguaro widget engine, which after a few years of development was scrapped. After scrapping this project, the pair was unsure of where to go. Apparently, they made the right choice in going to the iPhone:

Parker and Marshall Minardo, owners of a software company called EdgeRift, created a $1 iPhone application called Emergency Radio that gives users access to more than 1,200 radio feeds from police, fire and emergency frequencies around the country.
Within days of its launch in early May, the application shot up to No. 2 on Apple’s list of paid applications. As of Friday, Emergency Radio was still ranked in the top 40.
More than 180,000 iPhone and iPod Touch owners have downloaded Emergency Radio, and the application is currently averaging between 1,000 and 1,200 downloads per day, said 20-year-old Parker, Edgerift’s CEO.

The boys net in 70% of each sale, bringing in more profit than they probably ever got in PalmOS sales…

Congratulations, Parker and Marshall. Now come develop for the Pre

Read the full story: Tucson brothers create iPhone sensation.

Palm is in a pretty bad rut: their partners demand them to keep the Pre market closed for as long as possible in order to maximize their sales – while the press and hundreds of other developers want to get their hands onto the SDK as fast as possible. This being Palm, one can be 100% sure that they would find a sneaky solution – and a sneaky solution they did find.

PreThinking reports the following:

1. Palm invites and doubles the number of early Mojo SDK developers on June 26th
2. One of the lucky developer decides to leak the link to the Mojo SDK on IRC.
3. @keithah picks it up and tweets it.
4. Now we all have the Mojo SDK, well, at least the Windows users.

I personally think that the tooth fairy will visit me tonight – seriously, why would any developer be so dumb as to risk getting caught in a canary trap?

Instead, I think that the process was endorsed by Palm to some extent: this allows them to be pissed off in public and keep their launch partners happy, while being happy themselves about having provided their developers a cheap and ready-made route to market. Launch partners are happy as they remain the only ones to be in the App Store: but other developers can start developing now in order to get their apps ready for the moment when they are finally let onto the store.

Feedback, anyone?

Don’t ask me who was responsible for this ad – but he definitely knows how to hit the iPhone’s vulnerable spot:

via FaceBook

Ryan Kairer’s PalmInfoCenter quotes Palm’s CFO as follows:

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… handhelds still contributed some “marginal revenue” however it was so low that he would not even break down the numbers. Mr. Jefferies went on to say that Palm is no longer manufacturing handhelds and is focusing all of its resources on smartphones. Last quarter, the company only sold about 100k units.

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While this does not mean that no more Palm OS handhelds will be sold (Palm is likely to still have quite a few in stock), the writing on the wall is clear: merchants will eventually run out of stock when devices like the TX are concerned. PDA faithful have but two options: stock up or look at HP’s (excellent but very large and clunky) hp ipaq 210…

The quote below has caused quite a ruckus recently (via GearLog):

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Execs also hinted at the possibility of licensing their WebOS to other manufacturers. While they haven’t decided to do so, “it’s not a religious issue for us,” Palm CFO Douglas Jeffries said.

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While this may in itself sound good, it means absolutely nothing. Keep in mind that Palm has gained little from licensing its operating system in the past: other manufacturers forced the company to innovate and keep hardware quality somewhat decent.

Stating that your company is not at all intended on licensing the webOS to other manufacturers would have been contraproductive at the time: both investors and developers would have been more than miffed…and don’t even get me started on the bad PR.

Stating your openness, on the other hand, makes for good PR…and means absolutely nothing. Palm can define hardware criteria which are so stringent that no other manufacturer can fulfill them – and then just claim that they are intending to license, but can’t find anybody.

Palm execs have repeatedly stated in the past that they were opposed to licensing the new operating system to other manufacturers…so why should that change now?

What do you think?

Palm itself has not stated anything regarding Pre sales so far – which means that we are dependent upon people with good industry connections. One of these just claimed the following according to AllThingsD:

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In an investment note today, RBC analyst Mark Abramsky esimates that Palm has sold 150,000 Pre handsets to date and predicts it will sell 4.1 million in fiscal 2010 and 6.5 million in fiscal 2011.

Even though 150k units pale in comparison to the number of boxen Apple managed to move, it nevertheless is impressive. Now all we have to hope is that new apps are released shortly…

I personally think that the folks at MobiHand’s are one of the very few ESDs which will be able to survive on the long run – they consistently seek out loopholes and blank spots in the market which they then fill with usually great success. Their latest exploit is below:

Yes – you are correct. MobiHand has ganged up with MotionApps on the creation of a “certified” store which sells applications for the Palm Pre’s Classic environment. But let’s lewt them do the talking:

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MobiHand has been working closely with MotionApps to develop a Classic catalog and we are now prepared to launch this new catalog. We have already enabled the Palm Pre in your co-branded store. To see the catalog of Palm apps that have been identified to operate in Classic, go to:

http://www.mobihand.com/tamspalm/platformMain.asp?deviceid=1055

Some of these apps have been certified (i.e. “signed”) by MotionApps while others have only been tested and are known to work properly in Classic. More apps will be added to the catalog every week as they are tested and/or certified. Here are two examples — note that a special message is displayed at the top of these product details pages to inform users about Classic.

Once again: the TamsShop now sells Classic-certified apps. Hit the link below for the list – and don’t forget to look at the image above for a nice discount:
http://www.mobihand.com/tamspalm/platformMain.asp?deviceid=1055

The New York Times has thoroughly proven its lack of understanding of the mobile market with its now famous misquoting of a Microsoft manager (uncovered by our sister site TamsPPC).

Nevertheless, the boys do get read – which means that their latest article could move some things at Palm’s. Here is a key quote:

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So far, Palm is off to a slow start. Palm’s App Catalog has just a few dozen apps, even as Apple boasts that iPhone users can download 50,000 apps that do everything from receiving baseball videocasts to unlocking a rental car.

The payment system for the Palm app store — important if the company wants to charge for certain programs — is still under construction. And most crucially, Palm has yet to open its software development kit, the main set of tools needed to write apps, to most of the thousands of developers who have expressed an interest in creating programs for the Pre.

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As of now, Palm has not responded – we will see how it all plays out…

O’Reilly has just updated its O’Reilly book – the latest chapter deals with the localization of applications:

The author describes it as following (get is capitalized by him, not me):

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The Palm webOS platform was designed from the beginning to be a world-ready system from the choice of OS technologies through the UI design. While it may take some time to support all languages and regions, and to provide the application content to meet the needs of users in all locales, the framework has the basic support you need to build global applications.

In this chapter, you will GET an overview of the framework’s locale support and learn how to localize your application. We will localize the News application to Spanish and we will walk through each step of the localization process. In the last section, we’ll cover some of the Internationalization APIs available in Mojo.

Users are able to switch languages and regions at runtime using a Language preferences application, shown in Figure 11-1. You are able to select from any of the languages and any of the regions, enabling you to create any locale formed by those combinations.
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As usual:
http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780596802097?tocview=true