Can Palm Pre compete with Apple iPhone

Apple iPhone is certainly dominating the smartphone market in the US and many other 3G countries. So far, it has no major competitor. Palm Pre, recently unveiled at CES, looks relative promising, and somewhat controversial.

First, it features a multi-touch user interface that maybe infringing Apple's patents. Second, its has a new operating system called webOS, which is built on the Linux operating system and encourages developers to write native applications using standard web technology -- HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Third, it will support Adobe Flash, which iPhone will not support in the near future.

I think the business strategy behind Palm Pre is a lot like which of Google's Android -- use open source and standard web technology as an leverage to compete with Apple's relatively closed iPhone system. I think it's still too early to predicate who will come out at the top, but I very much welcome the competition.

Resource:

• VentureBeat article on Palm Pre webOS
• An overview of Palm Pre webOS architecture