CES 2011 is just a few weeks away, and we’re all assuming (and hoping) that Palm announces some awesome new devices to replace the aging hardware that’s out there right now. At this point, given the current marketshare numbers, what might be needed more than the new hardware is a new consumer mindset pertaining to Palm.

According to the latest numbers from Nielsen, Palm’s marketshare stands at a paltry 1.3% in the United States, and we’d reason that international marketshare is around that, if not lower in countries where Palm products are even available.

With Palm’s market penetration so low, the question weighing heavily on our minds right now is how do Palm and HP turn around their fortunes with webOS – especially if we need to wait some time for new hardware? The answer lies not with rebuilding marketshare. No, the answer is to reboot the public perception and start over. webOS is a fantastic operating system, but it was already fighting an uphill battle against iOS when it launched, and has since been eclipsed by Android and is facing competition for the bottom rung from, of all companies, Microsoft with their turn-the-smartphone-OS-on-its-ear Windows Phone 7.

In this mess of smartphone operating systems, how is Palm to differentiate itself and make the case for why Joe Consumer should buy a webOS phone over an iPhone or Droid? Reboot, reset, and start over. Palm needs to be aggressive with their advertising. It can’t be “We’re still here.” No, the message must be “We are here. This is why we’re awesome.”

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Palm’s PDK Hot Apps competition came to a close a few weeks ago, but it took Palm a little while to get through all the tallying and stuff to get a final list of winners. Unsurprisingly, Rovio’s ridiculously addictive Angry Birds came out on the top of the paid apps category, while Glow Hockey Free nabbed the top spot in Free Apps. That first place standing isn’t good for just bragging rights – the developers of each app will be getting $100,000 in prize money. Congratulations to Rovio and Natenai Ariyatrakool are due, so congrats, and enjoy the cash!

Palm tweaked things a bit from the Mojo version of the Hot Apps competition, so there were eight winners in the $50,000 prize block, four paid apps (Need for Speed Undercover by Electronic Arts, VisualBoyAdvance by dtzTech (with part of the winnings benefitting the open source warriors at WebOS Internals), Crusade Of Destiny by DVide Arts, and UNO by Gameloft) and four free apps (Raging Thunder by Polarbit, Pixi Dust Particle Simulator Game by WizardApps, Saber Ultimate by Draeger IT, and Natural + Electronic Drums for Pixi by EvilAnanas).

Another thirty apps (fifteen paid and fifteen free) netted their developers a $10,000 prize, while one hundred more (again, split between paid and free) gave the winners the option of $1,000 cash, or a brand new HP Envy 17 laptop computer.

Unsurprisingly, professional mobile game developer were scattered the PDK Hot Apps list just with their sheer numbers. Both Electronic Arts and Hexage had eight apps apiece make the list, while Glu Mobile had ten. But it was Gameloft that really dominated, securing twenty-five spots, all in the paid apps categories.

Again, congratulations to all of the developers that had winning apps. HP and Palm, more of this please. It’s fun, and this is the kind of stuff (along with pushing more units into hands) that’s going to help get developers onto the webOS platform.

Source: Palm Developer Center

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We are proud to announce the winners of our PDK Hot Apps Promotion. Check out the complete list here. This program was a lot of fun, and really raised the bar on the type and quality of apps we offer our Palm Pre and Pixi users. For all those who participated, we hope that in [...]

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Palm’s PDK Hot Apps competition for one million smackaroos ends today, and the winners are starting to shape up. To remind you, there’s $1,000,000 to be split among the top free apps and the highest revenue paid apps, with the number one claiming $100,000, two through five getting $50,000, six to twenty netting $10,000, and the remaining twenty-first through seventieth apps getting their choice of $1,000 HP store credit or an HP Envy 17 laptop ($1300 value).

The top spots in both the free and paid app categories are pretty much locked down, and it’s no surprise to see Glow Hockey Free atop free apps and Angry Birds (shocker) reigning supreme over the paid apps. In fact, the top five free apps haven’t changed in at least a week, movement through the top five paid apps has been fairly static as well. That said, we’re happy to see the WebOS Internals-benefitting VisualBoyAdvance having moved all the way up to the #3 rank in paid apps, all but guaranteeing the developers a $50,000 check. Update: Rod Whitby of WebOS Internals has informed us that developer Will Dietz will be sharing 10% of his winnings with the open source group, retaining the rest to pay off student loans.

That said, there’s still some room for movers and shakers to jump up a prize level. Angry Birds Lite, the free version with nine extra levels not found in the paid version of the top-selling app, has rocketed up the charts to #8. Sitting at eighth place would net developer Rovio a $10,000 prize, but the game has a weekly jump rate of +21 (meaning this time last week it was 21 spots lower on the Hot Apps totem pole). With that kind of momentum, Angry Birds Lite could find itself up in the $50,000 app category by the time all is said and done.

The same can be said for NesEm on the paid side, sitting at #7 (two spots from $50,000) with a weekly rate of +4. Ground Effect, back on the free side, stands an outside chance at $50,000 as well, sitting at number ten with an impressive weekly rate of +18.

Rednecks Vs. Aliens looks to be threatened, with a weekly slide rate of -3 and sitting at the very bottom of the $10,000 bracket. The only saving grace there for developer Tower Defense Mashups could be that immediately trailing apps SongWave Drum Machine and Mech Invasion have worse weekly rates. TileStorm stands to take advantage of the apps’ waning fortunes, ready to jump out of the $1,000 bracket to ten times the prize.

Lastly, on the paid side of things, there’s one all but garaunteed app jump, and that’s Astraware Casino. Sitting at #22 in the paid line, just one app – NFL 2010 – stands between Astraware and a $10,000 prize. At their back is a very strong wind, to the tune of +3 daily movement and a very impressive weekly rate of +41. There also stands to be significant changes at the base of the brackets, with some of the fastest movers coming in from the bottom (like Whack-A-Mole, with its +131 weekly rate).

Have a favorite app not on the list – today’s the day to try to get that last minute push for more downloads. Check out the bottom of the leaderboard and the fast movers to see who’s on the bubble.

All said, it’s been fun to watch the Hot Apps competition and we’d like to think it did a lot of good for getting developers interested in Palm. It does sometimes feel like the app pace has picked up since the public release of the PDK, webOS 1.4.5, and the continuing Hot Apps competition.

Via: Palm Developer Center Blog; Source: Palm Hot Apps

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Palm’s PDK Hot Apps competition for one million smackaroos ends today, and the winners are starting to shape up. To remind you, there’s $1,000,000 to be split among the top free apps and the highest revenue paid apps, with the number one claiming $100,000, two through five getting $50,000, six to twenty netting $10,000, and the remaining twenty-first through seventieth apps getting their choice of $1,000 HP store credit or an HP Envy 17 laptop ($1300 value).

The top spots in both the free and paid app categories are pretty much locked down, and it’s no surprise to see Glow Hockey Free atop free apps and Angry Birds (shocker) reigning supreme over the paid apps. In fact, the top five free apps haven’t changed in at least a week, movement through the top five paid apps has been fairly static as well. That said, we’re happy to see the WebOS Internals-benefitting VisualBoyAdvance having moved all the way up to the #3 rank in paid apps, all but guaranteeing the developers a $50,000 check.

That said, there’s still some room for movers and shakers to jump up a prize level. Angry Birds Lite, the free version with nine extra levels not found in the paid version of the top-selling app, has rocketed up the charts to #8. Sitting at eighth place would net developer Rovio a $10,000 prize, but the game has a weekly jump rate of +21 (meaning this time last week it was 21 spots lower on the Hot Apps totem pole). With that kind of momentum, Angry Birds Lite could find itself up in the $50,000 app category by the time all is said and done.

The same can be said for NesEm on the paid side, sitting at #7 (two spots from $50,000) with a weekly rate of +4. Ground Effect, back on the free side, stands an outside chance at $50,000 as well, sitting at number ten with an impressive weekly rate of +18.

Rednecks Vs. Aliens looks to be threatened, with a weekly slide rate of -3 and sitting at the very bottom of the $10,000 bracket. The only saving grace there for developer Tower Defense Mashups could be that immediately trailing apps SongWave Drum Machine and Mech Invasion have worse weekly rates. TileStorm stands to take advantage of the apps’ waning fortunes, ready to jump out of the $1,000 bracket to ten times the prize.

Lastly, on the paid side of things, there’s one all but garaunteed app jump, and that’s Astraware Casino. Sitting at #22 in the paid line, just one app – NFL 2010 – stands between Astraware and a $10,000 prize. At their back is a very strong wind, to the tune of +3 daily movement and a very impressive weekly rate of +41. There also stands to be significant changes at the base of the brackets, with some of the fastest movers coming in from the bottom (like Whack-A-Mole, with its +131 weekly rate).

Have a favorite app not on the list – today’s the day to try to get that last minute push for more downloads. Check out the bottom of the leaderboard and the fast movers to see who’s on the bubble.

All said, it’s been fun to watch the Hot Apps competition and we’d like to think it did a lot of good for getting developers interested in Palm. It does sometimes feel like the app pace has picked up since the public release of the PDK, webOS 1.4.5, and the continuing Hot Apps competition.

Via: Palm Developer Center Blog; Source: Palm Hot Apps

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After a fast and furious competition the PDK Hot Apps promotion ends tonight! There’s still activity near the top of the charts, so it can be anyone’s game. Tune in tomorrow to see the final (but unofficial) standings.
If you have a favorite game be sure to buy a copy and spread the word [...]

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Hot Apps is coming into the final stretch with just a little over a week left. The competition is really heating up. Angry Birds is still number one on the paid side, which I think we all expected. They are one of the top iPhone/iPad apps and webOS users world wide were excited to [...]

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My “me” has more than one “I”: I am a gamer, I am a mobile app enthusiast, and I am an avid webOS user. Plasma Cannon makes each one of those guys smile. Rob Merrell did an amazing job of crafting a physics-based puzzle game that is quick to learn and offers more [...]

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[Editor's note: After reviewing X-Plane, your intrepid editor's son discovered MiniSquadron, and asked if we would let him write another review. Who are we to turn down such willing help? Enjoy!]
As you can probably tell from my last review, I love planes. I also love arcade games. When you combine the two, you have me [...]

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We are well into the second half of the PDK Hot Apps competition and things are really starting to heat up. In just the last week Pixi Dust moved down two spots from #1 to #3, replaced by Glow Hockey FREE and Raging Thunder. On the paid side Angry Birds continues to dominate [...]

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