Hewlett-Packard on Tuesday announced the Palm Pre 2 and WebOS 2.0, the first Palm smartphone and software to appear under the HP banner and brand.
The Pre 2 is a curiously low-key upgrade for a Palm line that needs to aggressively expand to stay in the game. It looks and works almost exactly like the existing Palm Pre, though it has amped-up specs: a 1-GHz TI OMAP 3630 processor, a 5-megapixel camera, 16GB of storage, 512MB of RAM, and a flat, glass 320-by-480 screen. The Pre 2 will come out "in the coming months" both on Verizon Wireless and in an unlocked, 3G GSM version that's compatible with AT&T's network.
WebOS 2.0 is the bigger news, as it's coming to not only the Pre 2, but to "existing customers." (It's not clear from the press release which devices that covers.) WebOS 2 doesn't have a huge number of new consumer-facing features, but it has some exciting new APIs that will let developers expand core capabilities.
The biggest immediate deal for consumers is Adobe Flash 10.1. Flash will run on Pre, Pre Plus and Pre 2 phones (but not Pixis or Pixi Pluses) and will enable various interactive parts of Web sites that Pre owners couldn't see before.
Other new consumer features include Stacks, which let Palm users group multitasking programs more easily, Skype integration on Verizon phones, support for Bluetooth keyboards, support for VPNs, support for Facebook and Yahoo IM, and various other changes to make the WebOS experience generally smoother.
WebOS 2.0 lets developers plug right into Palm's "Synergy" technology, merging their own services into Palm phones' contact books, calendars, and messaging apps. The new "Just Type" lets developers create "quick actions" that trigger as soon as you start typing a word, anywhere on the device. A new "exhibition" mode lets developers create apps with special behaviors when the phone is docked on a desktop. Other new APIs make it easier for app developers to combine C++ and HTML5 code in their apps.
The obvious goal here is to make WebOS a compelling platform for software developers, as Apple and Android widen their lead in the mobile app land grab.
What Palm Needs
WebOS 2 looks good, but it doesn't strike me as groundbreaking. I suspect the software would have launched earlier had Palm not been going through a game of management and executive musical chairs. To excite the market, Palm needs more devices fast, and more software revs than one major version every 16 months.
Microsoft showed what Palm's up against last week, when it launched Windows Phone 7 on nine devices at once. Palm has promised a much wider array of WebOS device in 2011, and HP has said ever since it acquired the company that it intends to have WebOS play a role in everything from printers to PCs.
Palm's problem, of course, is the nonstop corporate drama at HP. After Palm was acquired last year, Palm lost several key employees (boo), HP's chief executive Mark Hurd was caught saying pessimistic things about the smartphone market (boo) and then backtracking (yay) before finally being fired in an incomprehensible expense-report scandal co-starring a former soft-porn actress (huh?) and being replaced by an utter cypher from enterprise software maker SAP (your guess is as good as mine.) Most recently, Palm poached brilliant-but-frustrated smartphone software guru Ari Jaaksi from Nokia and hired Samsung R&D exec Victoria Coleman (yay?)
On one of my earlier WebOS 2.0 articles, commenter "rlopin" attached a long list of HP's recent partnerships and purchases, which he opines could add together into a strong mobile ecosystem. That's clearly HP's intention, but every merger adds some administrative digestion time.
I've had Palm and HP execs tell me with great fervor that they're on track and that WebOS has a strong future within HP. I don't doubt their sincerity, but constantly reordering your core staff and management team bleeds energy out of a company. Palm and HP need to stop re-organizing long enough to start competing.