Thoughts on the Pre, webOS, enterprise and potential for upstaging the iPhone

On Monday, eWeek’s Darryl Taft posted a story (“Why Some Developers Think the Palm Pre Could Upstage the iPhone”) that was full of promise and hope, while splashing on some cold water of reality.  It’s a lengthy piece (nearly 2000 words) that weaves its way around why developers will love the Pre.  In it are quotes from three companies who have a track record as developers for Palm, impressions from a newbie, Genuitec, a company that provides Eclipse-based productivity tool-suites, and thoughts from an analyst at CCS Insight.

Things that stuck out in the story include:

webOS presents fewer challenges because… there are "no funky subsets of Java to use [Java ME or Android's Java SE minus random stuff] or native languages [Objective-C and XCode for iPhone or C++ for Symbian].  What millions of developers need to know, they already know: HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript.  All standardized and ready to go,” said Genuitec’s Williams.

webOS presents more challenges because… you don’t have a wealth of tried-and-true expertise to consult, for one," said Handmark’s vice president of marketing Evan Conway. "But in many ways, it is exactly those constraints that make the end result all the more fulfilling.

Enterprise too…  There were several mentions of how well webOS and the Pre would play in the enterprise.  Pivotal Labs’ vice president of technology, Ian McFarland said he believes the Pre can become the next great enterprise-class device. "I think it's a great fit for that space," he said.

 "Palm already has some penetration in that area. And the Pre delivers an easy tool set to develop against. If you're developing for an enterprise and you're taking Web services back ends and tying them to AJAX [Asynchronous JavaScript and X M L] front ends, you can take exactly the same skill set and build applications for this platform. It's going to be a really good fit for custom apps for the enterprise, and for Web app developers in particular to do custom apps."

Maybe Netbooks?  McFarland also noted that webOS could eventually run on netbooks, “there's nothing that would preclude it from doing that. …It should be fully portable."

Can it hold developers’ interest?  The analyst, John Jackson, vice president of research at CCS Insight (http://www.ccsinsight.com/who/) noted how Apple “does this magnificently by wrapping the platform in a commercial juggernaut that gives developers a clear path to revenue and massive transaction volume assurance.”

“So for Palm and all other aspiring competitors, cool and cutting edge only get you so far. You need to create revenue for both developers and the channel—in this case, Sprint. That’s a function of unit volumes and transaction volumes [application usage]."

Pre is to Sprint like Google G1 is to T-Mobile… It’s the tail end of the story that is triggering a lot of discussion on our forums, where Jackson compares the sales profile at Sprint with that of the G1 at T-Mobile.

This eWeek story presents a lot of good points.  Check it out and join in the discussion at the forum.

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