farbot.com

The Pre has done well enough in the marketplace for Palm to decide to steer away from competing handset operating systems entirely. They announced recently that all new handsets will be WebOS devices, taking Windows Mobile's perceived dominance in the enterprise and throwing it out the window entirely.

For Palm, WebOS has done its job -- it has given them a new beginning, albeit a very slow one since their App Catalog only got payment support this week.

This is something of a surprise for me. Windows Mobile might be looking really long in the tooth next to Android and WebOS these days, and RIM might be cleaning up all over the corporate world, but Microsoft's venerable mobile OS is still a powerful presence in the enterprise. Previously Palm had gone so far as to cede the enterprise to Microsoft, saying that their OS would fly on "prosumer" devices only, keeping Palm OS 5 on the low end like the Centro. The upcoming Pixi seems to be the next gen replacement for the Centro, so I think Palm is going to bet the farm on what is formerly known as Palm OS II.

I applaud this as it shows confidence in their own platform, but their destiny is ultimately only partly in their hands. They need a vibrant developer community and they need other carriers to offer their phones here in the US. Sprint might have highly-rated data service and better pricing for data plans than other carriers but they're also constantly shedding subscribers towards AT&T and Verizon. Signing more carriers could be tough, with Verizon cozying up to Google's Android offering and AT&T perfectly happy to try and sell its soul to Apple again to keep exclusivity on the biggest mobile device in years.