We just wrapped up the keynote for Palm’s Developer Day in New York City. A tag-team of Ben Galbraith, Dion Almaer, Phil McKinney, and Joe Hayashi took the stage to give an overview of where they see web and mobile development now and where they see it going in the future.
Ben and Dion noted that the web and HTML5 really are going to become a first-class app development and distribution platform – as evidenced by even Microsoft’s new and surprising support for HTML5 standards.
Phil McKinney gave his ’stump speech’ about the excitement within HP for webOS and reiterated that HP is looking to drive webOS to lots of form factors and devices to fill the gap between the smartphone and the PC. Phil also broke out his flexible display technology. We asked him how he’s going to keep excitement up over the next few months for webOS in the consumer market and his response: it will be easier to generate excitement when you have new devices. Expect HP to bring tablets, new phones, and "really interesting new form factors" in 2011. McKinney also noted that HP controls literally 10% of the shelf space in the consumer electronics space and they plan to make Palm "to play an important part for that shelf space."
Later on, Joe Hayashi teased that HP will be moving away from the current application framework (called Mojo) to something called "Enyo" that will be faster, support multiple form factors, and work with Palm’s online, drag-n-drop development Ares system. (in fact, "Enyo" is a Greek goddess of war and a companion to the war-god Ares – get it?). Hayashi notes that the Early Access Developer SDK will see support for both Enyo and tablets in early 2011. Also pegged for "Early 2011" - those slates and phones that Palm is very much aware we are all waiting on.
We’ll have more on the Enyo app framework later this afternoon. Keep it locked to PreCentral!
