How Many webOS Apps Can a Million Dollars Buy?
It’s fair to say that that webOS catalog is lagging competitors in the quantity of software titles for the Pre and Pixi handsets. But quantity isn’t everything — quality applications that enable a mobile device are far more important to me.
When I put my Palm Pre on notice, this was one of the primary reasons for the action. Software that I wanted or needed to use on a daily basis simply didn’t exist on the webOS platform yet. Palm is increasingly making it easier for developers to jump on board, however.
Following the Mojo SDK, Palm introduced a web-based development environment in Ares and also announced a Plug-In Development Kit at last month’s Consumer Electronics Show. Now that more tools are available, Palm’s now offering a bit of a bounty to entice development.
The Palm Hot Apps Program is based around a $1 million prize pool to reward developers. The top prize of $100,000 goes to the developer of a free webOS app that most downloaded between today and May 31, 2010. Likewise, the top paid app downloaded over the same time period nabs $100,000. The remaining prize pool is split between the next 200 top apps within categories, with prizes ranging between $1,000 and $10,000. Qualifying software titles must be built with either the Palm webOS SDK or the Ares environment, so those cool games built with the PDK shown off at CES won’t qualify.
So the toolsets are there and now there’s a million dollars on the line. The question is — how much will this help the webOS platform by adding more quality-driven titles to the webOS App Catalog? I’m not suggesting that current apps are lacking in quality — some are quite stellar and leverage the advantages of webOS, in fact.
But the Pre still seems caught in that chicken-and-egg scenario, more so than any other mobile platform right now. Developers tend to focus resources on the hot platforms in order to maximize return on the investment. And without a large number of quality titles, consumers could be skewed away from webOS handsets and towards those platforms perceived as “hot.” How much impact do you think this million dollar challenge have?
Clearly, Palm is heading in the right direction, although it hasn’t happened fast enough for some. The development platforms are maturing and the potential user-base for webOS is growing thanks to additional carrier options. Adding a financial incentive sweetens the pot even further, but will it be enough?
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As a die-hard Palm OS 5 user (Pilot IIIx, IIIxe, Sony Clie, Treo 600, 650 and now 680), my problem with Palm is not software (I’d have used the emulator to run my OS5 apps in the interim).
My problem is hardware. The Pre is still not big enough. It’s too cutsy, aimed at the teenie-texting crowd, instead of at the “prosumer” users of yesteryear, who want a bigger screen (the root word of spreadsheet is “spread”), a stylus to continue doing the techie things for which we still hang onto our OS5 devices like grim death, a keyboard not aimed at the 5 th percentile fingers that are as slim as the styli that is no longer available, a CHOICE whether I want to back up my data to “the cloud” or to my desktop after coming to depend on my Desktop for all these years, expansion capability so that I can do the things I was accustomed to doing before (watching movies, listening to music, backing up my data, restoring my handheld after a software trial went wrong).
This cloud thing requires connection to the network at all times, and I gotta tell ya, that’s just not possible (like, on a plane, or on the subway or…)
Palm spent too many years lagging behind, and now have rushed to the opposite extreme by jumping too far forward, and too many have been caught in the middle.
Lest we forget, the whole concept of a smartphone with apps by which users could customize their experience was grown by the venerable Palm Pilot. The Pre is an underwhelming path forward.
Hopefully, after Palm spends its million dollars to promote software development, it will have some money left over to develop a smartphone that is smarter.
I might be low maintenance, but I’m pretty happy with the app selection so far in WebOS. The recent release of 3D ganes really helped.
I always thought Palm should have approached the most popular app makers and subsidized webOS versions of those apps. I believe they did some of this before launch and should have continued instead of squandering resources on making a premature SDK public.
In my opinion the problem with Palm’s new devices is that their vision is vague. At least the old Palm OS had a mission, but webOS is just kind of cool and iPhony which invites futile comparisons with Apple’s offering. It’s really a mass market device, from a company that can’t afford to be good at everything.
i find the app selection too be fine, smartphones in general are such a boring segment with crippled functionality that i really only use them for a “fix” until i can get home to a REAL computer that can do anything i want.
the more i use any of them (iPhone, webOS, Android) the more toy-like they seem, this whole app # chaser is absurd. at least back in the day WinMo apps were deep functional programs. its funny how Apple is becoming what they used to bash MS for, except Apples system is even worse (closed).