Research firm the Kelsey Group has released its second annual "Mobile Market View" report. They found that 18.9 percent of U.S. mobile consumers now use a smartphone, and among those surveyed, 49% plan to purchase an advanced mobile device within the next two years.

The report also found a healthy growth rate for mobile Internet usage. Their data showed the percentage of mobile users who access the Internet from their mobile devices increased from 32.4 percent in 2007 to 38.9 percent in 2008, an annual growth rate of 20 percent.

CrazySoft has just released a new game, Zeus Quest - Anagennisis of Gaia, for Palm OS and Windows Mobile devices. Zeus Quest is described as a huge and funny adventure game with gorgeous cartoon graphics. Your mission as Zeus is to save the planet. You begin in classical ancient Greek period with a time machine at your disposal. There are many riddles to solve, mini games and interactions with various Grecian deities. The game is translated into several languages and supports high resolution plus devices.

Zeus Quest v1.0 is available now for Palm OS and Windows Mobile. It comes with a free trial period and costs $19.95. It is currently on sale for $17.95 for a limited time.

Jean-Louis Gassée, founder of Be Inc. and former PalmSource Chairman and Apple Exec, posted an interesting little factoid to the Monday Note blog blog concerning a potential Apple acquisition of Palm way back in 1997. Monday Note is co-authored Frédéric Filloux and Jeal-Louis Gassee.

The paragraph in question is entitled "Android: First Impressions" and reads:

A perhaps little known fact: in the Summer of 1997, Steve Jobs called Eric Benhamou, 3Com's CEO (the company owned Palm). "Give me the Palm and come and join my Board of Directors. Only Apple can make Palm a true consumer brand." Nothing happened. Apple's foray into the product segment had to wait ten more years.

Coming on the heels of the announcement that the WM6 update for the Treo 750 is no longer available for download is a new rumor that the Treo 750 may about to reach EOL status. TreoCentral is reporting that the 750 has quietly been removed from both the Palm and AT&T online stores, though the unlocked version is still available at a $529 pricetag that nearly equals the far more appealing Treo Pro. A recent visit to a local AT&T corporate store revealed the 750 display model still present but no units in stock for sale, according to a sales rep.

Per their usual tradition, Palm and Verizon have quietly released a new ROM updates for the Verizon version of the Palm Centro. With this update, the Verizon Centro has been brought up to ROM version 1.03.

Palm is being rather vague on the specific improvements in this update, claiming only: "This software update is a minor tune-up that may improve device usability in certain situations."

Palm has filed a regulatory 8-K statement with the SEC indicating a "Change in Directors or Principal Officers." It turns out that Palm's Senior Vice President, Global Markets, John Hartnett will be leaving the company effective November 28. The circumstances around his departure were not disclosed.

John Hartnett has been a longtime Palm/palmOne/Handspring employee and joined Palm from the Handspring acquisition. He was promoted to Senior Vice President in May 2005. As a SVP he worked closely with and reported directly to the CEO Ed Colligan.

PDAParts, an aftermarket PDA parts and service company, is currently selling the Palm m515 handheld for $39.99. The company is even offering free shipping through this weekend. The m515s that they have up for sale are refurbished and come with a cradle and charger, you can download the software from Palm support. While it's still a nearly 6+ year old handheld, it could still be a useful as an organizer or as a fancy desk clock or digital photo display.

The Palm m515 debuted in March 2002. It was the successor to the m505 and included a number of improvements such as a much better color display and additional memory. The m515 runs Palm OS 4.1 utilizes a 33 MHz Dragonball VZ processor and has 16MB of memory. It weighs in at 4.9 ounces and includes a rechargable battery, a 160 x 160 pixel screen and a SD/MMC expansion slot.

FontSmoother for Palm OS has just been updated. FontSmoother enables you to display smooth (antialiased) custom fonts on your Treo, Centro or PDA. It works across nearly all applications on Palm OS 5 devices with 320x320 or larger screens. FontSmoother includes a number of free smooth fonts and comes with a utility that enables you to convert Windows TrueType fonts. This version bundles a new set of fonts called the Droid fonts, taken from Google's Android OS.

FontSmoother v2.32 sells for $12.95 USD. There is a free, fully functional 8 day trial, after which all smooth fonts default to their non-smooth versions until registration is completed (except in a few select bible applications).

Palm OS programmer extraordinaire Dmitry Grinberg has quietly announced his "retirement from the Palm OS world" but at the same time has notified the Palm community of his most ambitious project yet. In a forum post made last week, Dmitry has announced his plan to seemingly single-handedly develop his own OS, coined DGOS. DGOS will use a completely new kernel, written from the ground up. He goes on to give further details, such as claiming that DGOS is expressly written to run on ARM-based devices and shall be a fully multitasking, multithreaded OS with protected memory access-something sorely lacking in the current Palm OS Garnet.

Over four years after its release, the sheep shearers at Aceeca continue to tweak and refine their Palm OS 4.1.2-based Meazura MEZ1000 handheld with periodic ROM updates. The new beta ROM release ROM507rc4, dated October 20th, contains new CF slot drivers as well as a new serial port driver. Specifically the updates are listed by Aceeca as:

CF Driver - This update allows a much wider range of CompactFlash cards to be used.
Serial Driver - This update now empties the RX FIFO 100ms after the transceiver is enabled.

Mobile Advertising firm AdMob recently released its latest monthly Mobile Metrics Report. In the September 2008 edition the Palm Centro ranked in the top 10 of all US mobile phones at number 6. If you take the feature phones out of the picture, the Centro was nearly at the top of the list and even managed to edge out the iPhone during the same month which placed seventh.

The report also reveals some other interesting statistics. In total worldwide requests Palm came in at 1.8% (4.5% US), while its two major competitors RIM and Apple, came in at 3.5% and 2.5% respectively. In terms of requests by smartphone OS, in the United States RIM had a lead with 31%, Windows Mobile 29% and the Palm OS came in third with a 17% share again just slightly edging out the iPhone with 16%. Worldwide the percentage was much lower at 6%, reaffirming Palm's current weak international sales.