The Palm Pre is making big waves as the next-generation Palm smartphone with the potential to turn the company’s fortunes around. But, the Palm Pre’s hardware would be much less appealing were it not for the touch-optimized Web OS that runs the show. All those snazzy gesture-controls and capacitance touchscreen make for one fun-to-use UI. Today, we’re hearing that the Web OS will launch with an application store that will be known as the “App Catalog.”
Palm will be embracing the developer community in the near future with the release of the Palm Web OS SDK. The Palm Web OS will allow web-developers to apply their HTML, Javascript, and CSS skills to developing native applications for the Web OS platform. The upcoming Web OS SDK will allow web-developers to use a programming language they’re most comfortable with to access and interact with the Palm Pre’s hardware. But, we’re willing to bet that Palm will also support the traditional developer community – Web OS applications developed with using web-languages will no doubt be pretty to look at and quite useful, but hard-hitting applications like GPS navigation apps and mobile games will require some traditional development resources.
Because an integrated application-delivery platform is fast becoming par for the smartphone-course these days, Palm will be launching its own applications store, a la the App Store and Android Market. The Palm Pre developer blog notes that the App Catalog will “provide an on-device application catalog to deliver your apps directly to users.” The Palm App Catalog will bring applications to the Web OS, helping to drive adoption of the platform as a whole.
We can’t wait to check out the applications in the App Catalog!