While we’re not fond of reporting what every analyst says, lately there’s so few out there that even remember that webOS exists so we’re duly reporting this one via Forbes. According to BMO Capital Markets analyst Keith Bachman, HP will ship its first webOS tablet in March 2011. Bachman’s information comes from a recent trip he and his BMO colleagues took to Asia, where they met with "more than 30 tech-related companies."

According to Forbes, Bachman isn’t "overly optimistic" about the webOS tablet and its share of the 40 million worldwide tablet sales that BMO expects for 2011.

Source: Forbes (Thanks to tasogare in our forum for the heads up!)

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The App Catalog has seen impressive growth since it first went live a little over 6 months ago.  Palm’s Early Access program brought in dozens of developers who have created over 1,000 applications in that time frame, and while we don’t have access to as many apps as other smartphone platforms do, there are a number of high quality ones that fit into all of the important categories.

With that in mind, we’ve created a list of the must have applications that have come our way in 2009.  If you’re new to webOS (you should also see our getting started guide), or have been with the platform for awhile and are unaware of how the Catalog has grown over these last few months, this is a guide for you.

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Anticipating a huge response to the barely-advertised Palm Pre launch, Sprint and Palm are setting up tech support “war rooms” to expedite any tech issues customers. As reported by Forbes, Sprint is bringing in extra employees to help manage the crowds and Palm is dispatching more than 100 representatives (that’s a tenth of Palm’s 1,050 person work force) to Sprint stores, and they’ll be hanging out for two months.

Also on tap will be so-called tech support “situation rooms” for store reps to hit up with live chat should they encounter issues during launch. AT&T took similarly strong steps leading up to the iPhone 3G launch, though Sprint and Palm seem to be going a step further in their hopes to have a successful launch.

Training of Sprint employees will be the key, however, to the success of the Pre launch. While many of our readers are already well-versed in how to work their Pre phones (despite not having even touched one yet), Sprint is planning for everybody else to use the Pre launch as the first full-blown test of their “Ready Now” program. While Ready Now has been online since the fall of last year, this will be the first true large-scale test of the one-on-one training orientation designed to make sure that customers are adequately educated on their new devices. Of course, the end goal of Ready Now is to ensure that customers encounter less uneducated frustration with their new phones and don’t return them, but there’s one problem if they’re planning for long lines: one-on-one training takes time. Probably lots of time with something as new as the Pre and webOS.

That said, Sprint still has customer service reputation issues to overcome. In just over a week we’ll be able to tell you whether the war rooms and time-consuming Ready Now program are as effective as Sprint intends for them to be. One. Week.

Thanks to patches in our forums for the tip!

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