Again the awesome power of webOS is demonstrated by others’ desire to emulate it, this time by hacking a Nokia N900 running Maemo to play webOS PDK apps.       

 A video posted on YouTube shows The Sims 3 running silky smooth on an N900. Other users in a Maemo forum said Need for Speed Undercover and Let’s Golf with great success as well, and without much effort. Check out the video after the break.

It is not too surprising when you consider the specs of the Nokia N900 and the Pre are almost identical. Both have an OMAP3430 processor, both have a PowerVR SGX and OpenGL ES 2.0 libs, and both run a Linux based OS. Native apps for the Pre are written with SDL 1.2, which the N900 supports.

The only problem for an N900 user running one of these games is that the N900 does not support multi-touch, which would render some games unplayable unless a hardware work around could be devised, as one user suggested using the keyboard.

The Pre is one of the best gaming devices around. It is rivaled only by the iPhone and porting iPhone games to webOS can be done fairly quickly so there is not much of a disparage between the two devices. The games run just as smoothly on webOS as they do on the iPhone (with the exception of too many cards errors on a Pre minus). So after years of hearing about ‘iPhone envy’, it is nice to see some Pre envy out there.

Source: Maemo.org; Via WebOS Internals (Twitter), PreCentral forums

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There are two things that Palm owns that are of true value: webOS and a giant bucket full of patents. Either would be good reason for a larger competitor to purchase Palm, and according to some analysts, either is good reason to declare Palm to be undervalued (Palm stock plus Elevation Partner’s 1/3 share equals approximately one billion dollars).

That Montana-sized basket full of patents is good for several things. Especially when that basket of patents contain things like "Integrated Handheld Computing and Telephony System and Services," i.e. smartphone. For one, Palm can claim royalties when other companies use that patent. It also, at least to this point, has served as a barrier against most serious patent infringement cases (Hello, Cupertino). Having a lot of patents is also good for something else: when those patents are licensed by many companies, it gives the holder significant value. Palm’s veritable trove of patents has lead PatentVest CEO Anthony Mazzarella to declare to Investors Business Daily that, “Based on our metrics, the value of Palm’s intellectual property is along the same order of magnitude as Apple. The market is overlooking the IP value in Palm, which has great value.”

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There is this test call the Acid3 Test, and it is designed to test a web browser’s compliance with web standards, with an emphasis placed on Document Object Model and JavaScript. For an operating system based on web standards, you might think that webOS would have been scoring fairly highly with the test from day one. Not so, it would seem. In the early days of webOS, the browser scored a pitiful 1/100. With the update to webOS 1.3.1, the browser scored a 73/100 – better, but still not great.

Now, with webOS 1.4 out and about, the browser’s standards compliance has taken another step forward, scoring a 92/100. Obviously, that’s a great step forward as far as the browser is concerned, and we have been receiving reports of better performance and rendering on all manner of sites as a result. The score also vaults the webOS browser (seriously, it needs a name) to the upper tier of mobile browser compliance, topped only by Mobile Safari (100/100), Opera Mini (98/100), Firefox on Maemo (94/100), and Android’s browser (93/100). Of note, Safari and Android are both powered by the same WebKit core that hums underneath the webOS browser (and webOS as an OS), so full standards compliance is a possibility. At the very least, the score is worlds better than before and far ahead of Internet Explorer (Mobile: 5/100, Desktop: 32/100). For 99.999999% of users a score of 92/100 is going to be more than good enough for their browsing experience.

jack87 in our forums also notes that several sites (like costco.com) that previously failed out on webOS are now working. How about you, seeing better rendering now that you’re all 1.4′d up?

EDIT: Anchors (links that lead to a specific point on a page, e.g. comments) work now too! This blogger = happy camper.

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In some ways, Palm and Nokia might be polar opposite companies: one is a perennial underdog who has mainly seen modest success in the US market, the other is a global giant who sells more phones than most anybody yet can’t see to gain any traction in the US. Then again, I also see the companies as very similar: both were pioneers in the smartphone space and are facing difficult times ahead, both appear to be betting the farm on new and untested Linux-based operating systems, both have straight-up loyal (if not fanatical) groups of users pulling for them. Heck, I even picked Nokia as the company I’d like to see buy Palm if Palm were for sale (they’re not).

All this has been in the back of my mind this week as I mulled over my time with the Nokia N97 Mini and the Nokia N900. I also need to thank the generous and kind Nokia Experts commenters, who have been super-helpful in getting me to look at Nokia phones in a different light.

So let’s do this: Round Robin Round Two!

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Of all the smartphone platforms in play for this year’s Smartphone Round Robin, webOS is clearly the very newest. Outside of our own Dieter Bohn, none of the other Smartphone Experts network sites editors participating in the Round Robin had had significant face time with webOS, and that includes WMExperts editor Phil Nickinson. So when Phil got a Palm Pre and a Palm Pixi shoved into each hand, we left him on the side of the road asking, “Whaaaa?”

Thankfully, the trusty and knowledgeable members of the PreCentral community stepped up and gave Phil the help he needed so that he could knock out a comparative review of webOS in a week’s time. It helps that the webOS user interface is incredibly easy to learn and navigate.

Phil came away with plenty of observations about webOS, especially with how Palm’s rebirth comes as Windows Mobile seems to be losing its footing. What all did Phil think about webOS, the Pre, and the Pixi? Well, we don’t want to ruin the surprise for you, so you should head on over the WMExperts to see what he has to say about webOS cards, apps, and hardware.

Of course, if you want a Pre or Pixi for yourself (or a loved one), we’re here to help you out. All you have to do is leave a post in a Smartphone Round Robin thread in the PreCentral forums and you’ll be automatically entered to win a Pre or a Pixi. Cool, eh? Of course, there are some rules, so read up before posting down. And stay tuned in the next week as Casey Chan of Android Central takes on webOS (he just tackled Windows Mobile) and Dieter gets hands-on time with Nokia’s S60 and Maemo. Hopefully he can wash that iPhone smell off his hands first.

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It’s been a little while since we’ve seen an analyst comment on the nonexistent acquision of Palm by Nokia, but Brian Blair of Wedge Partners has come to our rescue with a piece on why Nokia should buy Palm. His points mirror our own thoughts on the front of where it would make sense: Palm needs money, Nokia has money; Nokia needs a good OS, Palm has a good OS.

In an ideal world it could very well be a match made in heaven, but there are still some things to consider. Namely, those things are the hundreds of millions of dollars that Nokia has invested in Symbian S60 and Maemo. Clearly, Nokia has settled on Maemo as their operating system of choice for the future, even if it lacks some of the polish and functionality of webOS. It’s also worth noting that while Nokia may be a small player in the US smartphone market, they’re still the dominant force in the global smartphone market.

Nokia and Palm do need each other, but both companies are committed to doing things their way and alone at that. Thus far, every acquisition Nokia has made was not to either enhance their current strategy, or to expand into a new market. Purchasing Palm would do neither – it would replace or compete with their current strategy. Nokia has enough problems competing with their own products, that’s why they’re cutting their 2010 product line in half, adding Palm to the fold would only compound the inter-company competition. Let’s as General Motors how well that works, shall we?

For as much sense as a Nokia to buy Palm, there are just too many complications for it to actually happen.

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Wall Street is at it again, with the rumor again circulating that Finnish smartphone maker Nokia is interested in buying Palm. The news, as well as Sunday’s impending launch of the Palm Pixi, drove up shares of PALM $0.95 (8.30%) in the day’s trading, closing at $12.40. The jump ended a less than stellar week, with Palm stock up 9.54% from Monday. During the same one-week period the NASDAQ technology exchange was up 2.62%.

Analysts have been generally positive on the Pixi and believe that it will sell well like the Centro before it. Unlike the $150-$200 range in which the Pre competes; there are few true contenders in the $100 bracket in which the Pixi will launch.

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A study recently completed by Gartner, Inc. predicts that in 2012 Palm’s webOS platform will have grabbed a mere 1.4% of the smartphone market with sales of 7.6 million. Gartner’s study holds that in three years annual global smartphone sales will top 525 million units (projected sales for 2009 are around 131 million smartphones). King of Gartner’s projected hill: Symbian, with 37.4% of the market, driven by 196.5 million devices shipped – though that is a drop from Symbian’s expected ~50% marketshare for 2009 (but still 20 million more units than 2009). The by-OS breakdown for 2012:

We aren’t too keen on these numbers. We can’t quite put our finger on why, but we have a feeling that the numbers for Android, iPhone, and webOS are too low, and that Symbian is frankly too high. And Maemo, which is currently only available on the N900 and will likely only be on N and E-series Nokia devices, garnering 23.5 million in sales in three years? We’re not analysts of any variety, but we really have to question the picture that Gartner is trying to paint of the future of the smartphone market – it just doesn’t mesh with the emerging trends that we are seeing.

Gartner also takes a bold stand on the growth of smartphones, which is generally agreed to be explosive in nature. While most research firms are predicting that sales in the 2012 timeframe will be up around 300-400 million, Gartner is predicting over 500 million. As with the opinions of stock analysts, the “research studies” of firms like Gartner should be taken with a few grains of salt. If you don’t believe me, consider that in 2006 alone Gartner predicted that Vista would be the last Windows OS release, proclaimed that Apple should quit making hardware and license Mac OS X, and determined that 2007 would mark the zenith of blogging.

Then again, the world is going to end in 2012, so what does it matter?

Thanks to Mike for the tip!

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