Will developers embrace webOS? Interview with Resco.

Jan Slodicka from Resco has answered some questions for PDA-247 regarding webOS and Resco’s potential development for this platform. Thanks to Tam Hanna for facilitating the interview.

1/ What was your initial impression of webOS and the Palm Pre hardware?

Mixed feelings – as probably most Palm OS developers. On the one hand attractive device that might have good chances in the mass market, on the other hand no compatibility to the existing platform.

2/ Do you have plans to develop for this platform, and can we expect to see some of your existing titles ported over?

I can talk for the Resco Palm OS division only.

All our titles were technically and computationally rather demanding and occasionally needed access to the Palm OS internals. I can’t imagine how such a complex software could be developed under WebOs/javascript/html.

Moreover, each one of our titles represented a large investment in terms of the development time. This goes against today’s trends:
- Better devices out of the box that minimize the need for added functionality.
- Smartphone develops into a mass device. Larger user base does not mean larger software market.
- The development cycle gets shorter
- Concept of the central on-device application store changed the distribution of the software dividends. There is a smaller set of successful applications that can afford even lower prices, which in turn exert a pressure on the remaining less successful applications.

Hence the answer to your question: We shall not port any of our titles to WebOS. In fact they can’t be ported – we would have to develop them from scratch. To be fair, I can imagine less risky ways how to earn money.

3/ In your opinion, is Palm back in the game?

I would give them good chances, so maybe 2:1. Perhaps even higher if everything worked as advertized. However, there are no independent tests available, hence

I am still a bit careful.

I don’t think they will ever restore their leadership, but they might become one of the key players in the mass market – iPhone, Palm, Symbian, Android.

I did not mention WM (and BlackBerry) as I see their role mainly in the enterprise sector.