• Business Week, Tuesday, March 24, 2009 11:15 AM

Palm has been winning over a lot of skeptical software developers lately to its forthcoming smart phone, the Pre, which will run WebOS. Many developers contacted by BW's Peter Burrows say that they would rather write for Pre than for other platforms such as Microsoft Windows and, in some cases, Google's Android, although Apple's iPhone remains the "it" device for most.

But Palm still has everything to prove, Burrows points out. On March 20, it announced a 70% drop in smartphone sales from a year earlier, and a net loss of $90 million -- 30% larger than what Wall Street expected. Its hopes clearly rest with the success of the Pre. "If the WebOS turns out buggy or the Pre turns out to be clunky, developer support will wane as fast as it waxed," Burrows writes.

Pricing has not been established. And it will need to sign with more carriers than Sprint Nextel.

Some developers see Palm's desperate straits as an advantage, however. Google's Android has a lot of potential, but winning the smartphone wars is not a do-or-die proposition for the search company. "There are a lot of people rooting for Palm," says Rob Hoxie, a manager with DataViz. And many of those cheerleaders are adept in writing software.

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