HP’s recent acquisition of Palm has taken its toll as yet another Palm webOS veteran that aided the company in building up webOS from the ground up has announced his departure. Senior director of human interface and user experience at Palm, Matias Duarte, has left Palm and is currently joining one of webOS’s competitors for newer ventures. The man known to some in the industry as the webOS guru, Duarte signed on to become the user experience director for Google’s Android platform. This follows after Palm’s senior vice president of software and services, Michael Abbott, also announced his departure from the company in favor for a role as vice president of engineering for Twitter. Surely it’s a blow for Palm and its webOS platform now that things are looking to be more stable, but there’s no denying the kind of talent that Duarte will bring to the table for Android. Eventually we’ll witness some of the fruits of his hard labor with the green Android platform that keeps on looking better with each incarnation.
source: All Things Digital

Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein reportedly released a memo on Tuesday that seemed to announce a shift from the webOS platform to Android. The memo was supposed to be up on Wikileaks at midnight, which it never was. The important part of the memo reads, “While Palm is incredibly proud of our engineers who spent timeless work and effort to bring us this advanced operating system,consumers simply have not caught on. To provide a better future for ourselves and customers, the only logical choice is to transition our hardware and software to the Android platform.” According to Wired’s Gadget Lab and Engadget, a source inside Palm says that there is no plan to switch to Android and that the company is committed to webOS.

There is no question that Android is hot at the moment. Even Rubinstein said that the DROID’s launch at Verizon before the Pre Plus was one of the reasons why his phone is selling poorly at Big Red. But there are things that Palm can do with its OS. Considering that many analysts who hated the hardware of the two phones love the OS, Palm could license webOS to another company who can make superior handsets. Whatever move Palm makes-and time is running out-dumping their home grown OS for the same software everyone else is using seems unlikely.
source: Slashdot via GadgetLab and Engadget

Verizon has been known to offer some of the industry’s best BOGO offers in the past, but there  might be an even sweeter promotion that’s going to be on the horizon. BGR is reporting that the latest Buy One, Get One Free promotion that Big Red is speculated to start running today, February 16, will feature some of their best devices to date. So if you held out long enough and plan on buying a Motorola DROID, HTC DROID Eris, Palm Pre Plus, or a Palm Pixi Plus, you’ll be eligible to get a second phone of equal or lesser value for free. If you want to venture from something aside an Android or webOS handset for the free phone, you can simply check out something like a Windows Mobile or feature phone. Finally, like all their previous BOGO offers, they will require you to sign a two year contract and tack on any required data plans. Still, you really can’t beat the savings you’ll get by this sweet promotion they’re offering.
source: BGR

We are expecting Adobe to release the plug-ins that will enable full Flash support for both webOS and Android sometime in the first half of the year. Now the company has informed that Flash for both platforms will be released at the same time, respectively through the Palm Catalog and Android Market.  The company has also brought working Android and webOS devices to the show. Windows Mobile users should not become disillusioned though, as Microsoft and Adobe have said that although it won’t be available on WM 7 at first, they are working to bring the browser plug-in to the platform in the future.

Additionally, Adobe has announced a new version of AIR, designed for smartphones. Adobe has that working on Android here at the MWC. This version of AIR should allow developers to bring Flash-based applications to all smartphones supporting the platform. Adobe has also developed a compiler that allows devs to compile Flash-based apps as native iPhone apps.
source: Adobe via jkOnTheRun

It is hard enough to know what you will have for lunch tomorrow, much less try to figure out what the cellphone market will look like in 2013. Still, research firm IDC is predicting that smartphone sales will be greater than 390 million units by that year. Peering deeper into its crystal ball (singular, please), IDC sees that Nokia remains the top selling smartphone throughout the world (minus the U.S., of course). That will allow the Symbian OS to remain number one worldwide. Number two will be a fast moving, comparatively new kid on the block, Android. Google’s open source OS will be powering 68 million smartphones by 2013 according to IDC. Starting in 2008 with just 690,000 handsets, growth to the estimated 2013 figure would represent an annual increase of 150% in Android owners. The iPhone OS, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile will round out the top 5 while Linux mobile trends lower and webOS grabs a limited share despite steady growth. So when the next 3 years go very quickly, don’t forget to refer back to this article and we will see if IDC nailed it. By the way, didn’t they pick the Jets to win the Super Bowl this year?
source: IDC via UnwiredView