Is it good news or bad news? That's the question confronting Palm and its investors today, as we're greeted with a fresh report from ChangeWave Research that shows the company's share of the smartphone market hasn't budged one iota since ChangeWave's last survey in June. The latest edition (PDF link) of ChangeWave's 90-day outlook for consumer smartphones shows Palm's share of the market holding steady at 7%.

How to interpret this? As usual, there's both glass-half-full & glass-half empty options. The former is the view that appears to have been taken by ChangeWave, with the company noting that this is the first time in years that Palm's market share hasn't declined since the previous survey, the Pre has potential to "attract customers from other manufacturers" and the Pre's customer satisfaction rankings are far above those of previous Palm phones (45% vs 28%).

Sprint has announced that Sunday, Nov. 15 will be the first day of nationwide availability for the Palm Pixi. The device will be exclusive to Sprint for a period and will cost $99.99 with a two-year service agreement, after a $50 instant rebate and $100 mail-in rebate.

According to the press release, the Palm Pixi will be made available at Sprint stores, sprint.com, through telesales at 1-800-SPRINT1, and at Best Buy, RadioShack and select Wal-Mart stores.

By now, Asia-Pacific Palm fans will have heard the sad news that we won't be receiving the Palm Pre anytime soon, as confirmed by intrepid investigator Jason Lingohr and reported by PreCentral yesterday. PalmInfocenter has been looking into this issue for some time now, and with this new information at hand did some digging of our own into the sorry state of affairs. The picture we have pieced together from multiple sources is essentially what Jason has already discovered, but with a new twist.

Palm's overarching strategy with the first generation of webOS devices is indeed to focus tightly on the North American and European markets. It's purely a matter of survival: the company does not want to spread itself too thinly at such a critcial juncture in its history. Thus, much like Apple's original iPhone, only a select group of countries will be receiving the first-generation webOS flagship, the Pre; indeed, we may have already seen the extent of Palm's initial international rollout with the US, Canada, Spain, the UK, Germany and Ireland (although there's still that Mexican Pre to consider, too...). Apparently, all the Australian carriers were informed of this decision several months ago - putting paid to recent rumours of a launch on Vodafone AU in November.

If you've been holding off on your desire to import a SIM-unlocked Palm Pre from Germany - thanks to those worriesome compatibility issues - you hopefully won't have to do so for too much longer. dakis of the PreCentral forums has been putting together a list of those international carriers whose SIMs are confirmed compatible with the German Pre. So far, we know that nine carriers are fully supported, three are partially supported (no MMS) and three are completely incompatible. I've taken the liberty of reposting his list after the jump.

For my fellow Australians, your correspondent will be testing the four major networks here as soon as my Pre arrives "in 6-8 days".

One of the chief advantages of the iPhone App Store is the fully browseable listing of applications via iTunes. Window-shopping can be a much more comfortable experience on the desktop, and Palm have taken a few steps towards recognizing that: first, there's now a listing of webOS apps on the Palm website, with a screenshot and short description of each. Your correspondent has no idea if this is a complete listing or not, with no access to the App Catalog of my own, but it's nice nonetheless. Nicer still would be a way of shopping, organising and managing your mobile apps via the desktop, but we'll take what we can get.

Turning to Twitter now, we have two recommended tweeters to follow. The first is Palm's newborn PalmNewApps, which will list each new app as it is added or updated in the catalog. The second is the original Apps4WebOS, which not only covers the App Catalog but homebrew apps, too.

Access and Emblaze Mobile have announced a new Access Linux Platform powered device at an Access developer event going on this week in Tokyo. The device will be branded as the ELSE and is running a specialized version of ALP v3.0 called the Else Intuition platform.

The Else Intuition platform is being billed as a new, complete mobile platform developed by ACCESS and Emblaze Mobile. The heavily capitalized press release states the platform features an advanced new interface engine, accelerated 2D/3D graphics, multitasking and elegant transition effects. Access says that they are actively promoting the device to top-tier mobile operators worldwide, and operator evaluations are currently underway, though there are no other specifics on availability or device specifications (in English at least) at this time.

Classic from MotionApps, the Palm OS Garnet emulator for webOS, will now include the GooSync Palm OS client. GooSync provides over-the-air synchronization tools for Google calendars, contacts and tasks. GooSync ties in with original Palm OS PIM applications and provides another means for moving classic Palm OS data into the cloud with a clever on device solution.

"It's great news for users of Classic. Being able to Sync with Google straight out of the box is an invaluable business service," says Chris Jukes, CEO of Toffa and GooSync. "So while GooSync's Lite service enables you to sync the default Google Calendar, the Premium service lets you sync multiple calendars up to 365 days in advance, contacts directly with Gmail, and tasks to the GooSync inbuilt tasks application. Autosync and multiple device support are just some of the numerous features supported through GooSync."

Canada's Bell Mobility has lowered its price on the Palm Pre. The introductory offer has been reduced by $50 to now start at $149.95 CAD with a 3 year contract and data plan. The fine print says the new pricing is good only for new activations through November 5th.

This price adjustment comes just 2 months after the Palm Pre's northern introduction. The move parallels a similarly quick pricing promo by Sprint.

Straight from the horse's mouth, folks: Palm will be addressing the bizarre Pre app install limit in an official update.

No details yet on timing nor on the method. But a fix is coming. Bank on it. Chuq told us himself, and Chuq would never lie. (I hear he's Vulcan.)

The strangest little things become news sometimes. And since the rest of the Internet is running with it, it seems only appropriate that PIC does as well: KeyToss have released a patch for the Palm Pre that lets you hang up the phone by closing the slider. It's installable via either Preware or WebOS Quick Install, and costs you nothing. Simple. The real question here is "why wasn't this an option on the Pre in the first place?" Seinfeld made the point about the satisfaction of a physical hangup years ago... and we've embedded him after the break.

I have to hand it to Jordan Gensler: he's a tenacious little publicity-hound, doing his best to pimp his fledgling software company Keen Studios by constantly harassing your correspondent via every communication channel available (I recently had to set my dogs on some over-zealous carrier pigeons). In order to preserve what's left of my sanity, this post will endeavour to cover all both things Keen Studios that have occurred since our last update.

Numero uno: KS have just released a beta of their latest webOS game, the deceptively-addictive Perfect Bounce. The rules are simple enough: use your finger to flick a basketball into a hoop, trying to swish as many as you can within a set time interval. You wouldn't think it'd be much fun without said finger-flicking, but I've just come off the back of ten minutes of infuriatingly difficult mouse-flicking in the webOS emulator and am positively itching to try the real thing. Jordan tells me it runs as smooth as melted butter upon oil across teflon over Barry White on the actual Pre hardware, and it'll debut soon in the App Catalog at the price of one piddling little dollar. Screenshot after the jump, and a little more...