• Purchase Price - Hewlett-Packard will be purchasing Palm for $5.70 a share or 1.2 billion dollars.
• HP Loves Palm WebOS - HP has said that they intend to invest heavily in to the OS
• Palm should stay relatively unchanged - HP has said that it will create it's own business unit for Palm, so the structure may go relatively unchanged.

In my view, this was possibly the best thing that could have happened to Palm. HP's 121.87 billion market capitalization is certainly less than Google's 167 billion, Microsoft's 267 billion, and Apple's 237 billion (as of now), but it's at the same scale where one can see HP playing with the big boys. It's also a good deal ahead of RIM's (Blackberry) 39 billion.

Let's look at the competitors again in comparison to Palm:

Apple vs. HP-Palm

Apple is certainly the leader with it's iPhone, iPod, and iPad group of mobile devices.

• iPhone vs. WebOS - I covered many reason why Palm Pixi is better than iPhone previously. It was a bit of stretch and overall there's little doubt that the Apple iPhone is the better phone. However, that gap could narrow quickly. A Palm Pre 2 on Sprint's upcoming 4G network would certainly do a lot to the change the game. Other new hardware would really push the envelope their.
• iPad vs. WebOS Tablet - It's hard to see how this may play out until we see what the WebOS tablet is going to be. HP has hinted very strongly that it plans to use WebOS for its upcoming tablets. Because WebOS won't have the same entrenched application store, I would expect it to come with all the bells and whistles that Apple leaves off like a camera for video conferencing. We do know that when the WebOS Tablet comes to market it will have great multitasking and very likely Flash support.
• iPod vs. WebOS PDA - Let's face it, the iPod Touch is essentially a PDA, not an MP3 player at this point. It's a great PDA with an app store and music store behind it. A WebOS version of the iPod doesn't look to be in the works. I don't think this is going to hurt WebOS much in the long run... I imagine that most people will move away from PDAs towards smartphones.

Android vs. HP-Palm

I think that Android, long-term, is probably the strongest of the smartphone platforms. It's hard for other smartphone OSes to compete with the price of free. It's even harder when Google can leverage all its applications (Gmail, Maps, Voice, Docs, etc.) for it's advantage. However, there are a couple of chinks in Android's armor. First, HTC is paying Microsoft royalties. Second, Android has to deal with the problem of supporting a lot of different hardware.

Microsoft vs. HP-Palm

Microsoft is coming to the game more than a year late. I realize that they have a lot of money and a lot of influence - but they have no app store (Palm's biggest problem). In general there are far too many questions to ask - until we have answers I think that Microsoft doesn't have the advantage.

Blackberry vs. HP-Palm

RIM's Blackberry has recently "entered to the game" with their OS being where Palm's was 3 years ago. I heard that the new OS is very good, but we'll see how that works. In the meantime they need to show what they can do.

Final Thoughts

In the end, I think we can expect that HP-Palm's WebOS will grow greatly. It now has the finances of HP and the flexibility to run on CDMA as well as GSM networks (GSM should be coming via AT&T in a week). The tight interlinking of hardware and software will allow a complete end-to-end experience for the consumer.

Related posts:

1. Palm Pre Plus Beats Nexus One in Laptop Magazine Poll
2. Get Paid $5 for “Buying” a Palm Pixi (with 2yr subscription)
3. Is Palm Dead?

First things first, let's look at the webOS application compatibility between Palm Pre and Palm Pixi. As far as applications are concerned, there are only a couple of differences between these two phones - Pre had a resolution of 320x480 while Pixi has 320x400 and Pre had WiFi while Pixi doesn't have WiFi.  So, unless your webOS applications are resolution sensitive or use WiFi functionality, be rest assured that your Pre applications will work like a charm on Palm Pixi as well.

However, if you have applications which fill up the whole display screen and do not use Mojo widgets, you'll need to make some changes to get them working perfectly on the new phone.  Thumbs up to Palm for starting early enough on this issue and publishing this document to make all developers easier. Palm also provides instructions on how to configure the Emulator to test your webOS applications at resolutions compatible with both phones. Good going! Nothing pleases a developer more than clear instructions and some easy to use tools for testing

If you are a WiFi freak, there's not much good news for you. WiFi webOS applications which worked flawlessly on Palm Pre will need to be developed in a way to work using an alternative communication mechanism other than WiFi. It's tough from a developer's perspective as you have to virtually re-write most part of the application. Most mobile experts believe that it's a matter of time before Palm rolls out another variant of Palm Pixi with WiFi capabilities. Much will obviously depend on how the WiFi-sans version does to attract consumers.

Like many of it's peers, Palm is a latecomer in the online application market place. However, the good part is that the Palm developer community has become very active in a very short span of time and is churning out one useful application after another. Let's face it, Palm is no Apple and the webOS is not even a distant competitor to macOS in terms of application development. Though Palm initially offered plans for free webOS applications, Air Hockey for webOS marks the launch of first paid application from the Palm Developer World. The response from customers has been pretty amazing for this first paid application and surely sets the bar higher for all future paid Palm Pixi applications.

Related posts:

1. Testing webOS Applications on the Palm Pixi
2. Developing A Palm Pixi webOS Application in Three Weeks
3. Palm Ares: Simplified WebOS Development