Palm is expected to announce that its Pre and Pixi smartphones will be available on Verizon (VZ) Wireless today. What else does it have in store? This would normally be Palm (PALM) bete noire John Paczkowski’s territory, but John’s en route to Las Vegas from the Bay Area, so I’ll be tapping away.
- Some totally unverified gossip from my fellow scribes here at the Venetian: Expect an AT&T (T) announcement as well. [UPDATE: Make that sort of verified – AT&T already indicated they’d support the Palm OS yesterday, as Business Insider‘s Dan Frommer notes]
- Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein on stage: Our platform is a deliberate bet on the Web. “At the heart of everything we do at Palm”.
- 85,000 downloads of WebOS SDK since launch in July. 20,000 registrations for new online developer program. Clear indicators in interest in our platform. [Translation: We’re going to start catching up to Apple (AAPL) and its gazillions of apps. Promise.]
- Pixi is “perfect choice for consumers looking to purchase first smartphone”. That’s why we have these super-cool back covers available. Check ‘em out!. And now a video of people talking about our stuff. A talking head mentions “the death of the PC”. Ominous!
- New partner: French carrier SFR, co-owned by Vivendi and Vodafone. SVP Jean-Marc Tassetto says his company reaches half of the country’s population. Apple dig, and praise for Palm: “We started negotiating in Cupertino, we ended up in Sunnyvale”.
- Product talk: here’s Palm SVP of Product Marketing Katie Mitic. Update on Palm developer program. After 6 months in closed beta, formally opening up. Any developer can submit WebOS app. Why work with Palm? More coded Apple digs: Promises “fast and easy development” cycle and “freedom and choice” in how developers take apps to market. 1,000 apps, and expect much faster growth now.
- Promises “new approach to app distribution” — ie you won’t have to get them exclusively through Palm’s equivalent of iTunes. Can get them anywhere on the Web, or via mobile. Shows off Projectappetite.com as an example.
- A “Hot Apps” bonus program this spring: $1k to developers with best distribution (both free and paid) measured by download.
- New “Plug-in development kit” for WebOS, too.
- Some new games to show off from the likes of gameloft, Electronic Arts (ERTS). Need for Speed, Sims, etc. Available today in the US.
- Here’s Travis Boatman, VP of EA Mobile’s Worldwide studios. Palm came to us a few months ago. Some praise for Palm (duh): “Within a few weeks, we realized how great this SDK is… really easy to use” etc.
- Some demos: Sims3, Need for Speed Undercover (which does indeed look “gorgeous” as Boatman says).
- More from Mitic, who intros Paul Cousinea, product marketing director, who is going to demo something involving Pre’s camera.
- New feature: Video recording. Demoing editing feature with footage he just took onstage. Sharing to YouTube, Facebook, etc. Available to all customers in February via software update. “No new hardware required.”
- Demos integration of various WebOS features, moving and using data/elements from one app to another: Sharing YouTube clip of clip you just shot, etc.
- And back to Mitic: More on over-the-air software updates. We’ve had 9 since June. Battery performance, email search, etc. “Bringing pace of Web development to the mobile environment.” Feb. update will have battery performance boost, too.
- Back to Rubinstein. Two new products. Pulls “Pre Plus” from his pocket. “More elegant, easy to use experience.” Button goes away, memory increases. Comes with 16 gigs of flash. Also: “Pixi Plus” comes with built-in wifi. More color choices for back cover.
- Carrier announcements: Both new phones available exclusively on Verizon Wireless.
- New 3G “mobile hotspot” app for both new phones. Allows you to tether “with appropriate data plan”. Can connect up to 5 devices.
- Taped message from Verizon Wireless CMO John Stratton , who is snowed in at O’Hare, apparently. Phones avail January 25.
- How much will new phones cost? We won’t tell you! Ho ho ho.
- Rubinstein recaps, promises to let CES visitors actually hold the new phones this time (last year Palm had a “look but don’t touch” policy when it showed off the Pre).
No mention of AT&T, even though the carrier has been talking about it in public. Interesting. Maybe there’s a “one carrier per press event” rule.
UPDATE (sort of): After the event, I asked Rubinstein about the phantom announcement from AT&T. Here’s the entire exchange.
Rubinstein: “We don’t have anything to announce”.
Me: “Really? Because AT&T executives are saying they’ll have two phones running the WebOS later this year.”
Rubinstein: “We don’t have anything to announce”.
He was smiling a bit, though. Certainly cheerier than when I asked former Palm CEO Ed Colligan about Pre pricing last year.
Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]