Comments on: Palm Dropping Dev Fees, Issuing Refunds

Palm Inc. has been making some generous concessions to its developer community of late and its latest new policy change will likely earn the company some acclaim during its last days of independence. Palm's Developer Blog has announced that Palm Inc. will no longer charge developers a fee for submitting and listing webOS applications in the Palm App Catalog.

According to the post, developers will no longer have to pay the $50 submission fee per app. Palm is even going as far as to refund all fees to devs that were previously collected.

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How amusing!

Tuckermaclain @ 7/1/2010 4:59:27 AM #

Must have been a big pill to swallow for Palm. They have enjoyed sh*****g on developers that were the best part of the Palm community. Things look different now that Palm is a marginal player. They need to be nice!

RE: How amusing!

jms001 @ 7/1/2010 1:35:07 PM #

It may be more than that. Palm had a big surge of purchasing with the recent app sale (or so it was reported). Maybe they are making an all-out effort to try to lure back developers, keep the ones they still have, reduce app prices, and increase app sales. After all if developers leave and app sales die, this thing really is dead and HP would have a hard time reviving it. How HP handles things after the purchase will probably make or break the phone.

RE: How amusing!

hkklife @ 7/1/2010 2:27:07 PM #

No, I think it's simply the fact that now the HP deal is official, they are going to earmark all of what had been Palm's remaining cash reserves to make a major marketing push. They gotta keep WebOS/Palm phones alive & in the public eye in this critical interim period. If that means paying developers or greater subsidies on the handsets, then so be it.

Between the WebOS 1.4.5 and 1.5 (supposedly the end of the existing "Palm" roadmap for OS 1.x updates prior to the acquisition) you can bet they are going to try and replicate the Centro success---forsake margins at the expense of building up software developent, users/dev goodwill, and devices sold.

By all accounts the AT&T rollout has gone much, much better than the VZW one (as is the device's hardware) so it's better to spend some $ to build on the little bit of momentum that they had than to let things grind to a screeching halt like they did in that weird period of public inactivity after the Centro launch in 2007 and the Pre release in 2009.
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->Verizon Moto Droid + Verizon Palm Centro

RE: How amusing!

Gekko @ 7/1/2010 3:10:28 PM #

so let me get this straight -

1. HP smartphones are non-existent/fail.
2. Palm smartphones are fail.

yet strap these two turds together and you expect magic?

come on.

RE: How amusing!

e_tellurian @ 7/1/2010 4:44:32 PM #

Palm did not fail others caught up with bigger budgets. Now it is time to take design to the next level with carbon fiber and exotic metals.

E-T

RE: How amusing!

Tuckermaclain @ 7/1/2010 9:54:56 PM #

I don't know how much carbon fiber is going to do if the phone isn't great in every way. I would feel like a goof toting around a carbon fiber iphone 4 or Evo. High-flow dual exhausts look cool on a real performance car but look kind of silly on an economy car.

RE: How amusing!

e_tellurian @ 7/1/2010 11:05:28 PM #

One would not want you to "look like a goof". Offering would be quality through and through.

E-T

RE: How amusing!

e_tellurian @ 7/1/2010 11:07:16 PM #

Sorry "feel like a goof".

E-T

RE: How amusing!

jms001 @ 7/2/2010 5:55:18 AM #

The AT&T rollout may have gone better than Verizon, but I haven't been impressed with their service. I went in to buy a touchstone (they only had one in stock). When I asked about the backplate that it requires, they told me that not only did they not have one, but they didn't carry them. They said, "lots of other people also sell the palm pre, try radio shack."

I was shocked they didn't carry such an essential item (the back plate). I was further shocked that they'd sell a part (the touchstone) that didn't work unless you bought another component (the backplate) from someone else.

I guess that's not the sales clerk's fault, but you have to wonder how seriously AT&T is taking the pre.

RE: How amusing!

jms001 @ 7/6/2010 6:09:43 AM #

Since the initial "we're not going into the smartphone market" statement, HP seems to be trying hard to backpeddle on that with a variety of different HP people talking about the future of HP/Palm and talking about smartphones. I'm not sure quite what to make of that. It seems pretty clear that they will be using WebOS, but I'm not sure where they are planning to go with smartphones. Anybody reading more tech articles than me have opinions?

RE: How amusing!

hkklife @ 7/6/2010 7:13:47 AM #

My take? Palm had two models or so in the can when the HP acquision was announced. Those model(s)-including the rumored C40-were better than Pre & Pixi but far from game-changers. I would guess that the surplus inventory of Pre & Pixi handsets combined with the HP deal to delay any new handsets until Q3. Palm has probably been using their remaining cash to beef up the specs of whatever unreleased devices are being prepped for launch.

Or they could be holding out for a big multi-carrier launch like Samsung is doing with their Galaxy S line. And kinda like how Palm used to do in the Treo 650 and earlier days.

Either way, I think the next 6-12 months are gonna be pretty bleak until the first real fruits of the HP/Palm tie-up start to appear alongside WebOS 2.0.