Palm Opens Dev Program, Offers $1M For Top App 91
CWmike writes "Palm opened up its webOS developer program to the public this week in a bid to close the gap with the number of iPhone and Android apps. Palm will also open up its application distribution channel to developers and Web sites, giving them access to detailed information about applications and statistics, such as the number of downloads. This will allow them to build their own application directories and application ranking mechanisms, Palm's Katie Mitic said. 'As an incentive to developers interested in building their own directories, Palm is offering $1 million to the developer with the most downloads of free and paid applications between February and May, Mitic said. Palm also announced a plug-in development kit for WebOS that allows developers to extend the OS's capabilities using code written in C and C++. Over time, these plug-ins will be incorporated into the software development kit, she said. The plug-in development kit will be released at the Game Developers Conference in March, but a handful of game developers have already put the kit to use. EA Mobile, Laminar Research, Gameloft and Glu all released games that were developed using plug-ins. Those games include 3D titles, such as EA Mobile Need for Speed Undercover, and are now available.'"
Re:Useless (Score:3, Interesting)
Dying? WebOS was just released last summer and quite frankly it's a great Linux based system. Much better than Android and competitive with the iPhone. Unfortunately it needs more apps, but with access to the native hardware now, I believe it will surpass Android in useful apps.
Re:Useless (Score:4, Interesting)
You're making an assumption that the goal of every marathon is to win 1st place.
I'm not sure what you mean by letting go of a dieing technology. Linux? Web Standards (JavaScript, HTML, CSS)? C, C++? I haven't seen any signs that any of those are dying. In fact Gartner had a paper on how Web Apps are the next big economy. That would suggest that Palm has positioned itself very well, especially considering how HTML5 and Canvas are poised to change RIA development.
Re:No, It's a $1M pool for the top 442 developers (Score:3, Interesting)
Woah, that's huge. According to billshrink's comparison [billshrink.com] there are only 300 apps currently for the Pre. The lack of apps was the #1 reason I haven't bought a Pre yet.
This should let them easily get 10x the number of current apps for a relatively cheap price. Also since there are so few apps to start with it should be fairly easy for any descent app to at least get the $1k prize.