The Palm Pre, said to be the biggest competitor against the iPhone, released its Software Development Kit (SDK) to the public today. With this, Palm hopes to compete with Apple on the application front, where they already have a staggering 65,000 apps and 1.5 billion downloads (and counting). The Pre has probably less than a thousand at the moment, making this a classic case of David vs the Goliath. Can Palm’s stone (its Mojo SDK) topple the giant?
It appears that it may not be so, according to some developers. You see, the SDK doesn’t allow the use of OpenGL. In other words, don’t be expecting to be playing Doom or anything more complex than chess on your Pre anytime soon. While it is true that OpenGL is largely only used for games, it is foolhardy to think that games aren’t an integral part of smartphone applications. In fact, those games are part of the reason Apple had such a success with its iPhone. Sure, you can develop apps like graphical calculators, currency converters or newsreaders but those applications only appeal to a certain group of people. Games appeal to everyone. So why hamstring yourselves like this?
Apple, on the other hand, has also started to move against Palm by disallowing syncing to iTunes. So, if Palm doesn’t think of something soon, it could very well be the one in the dirt.
GeekStrike RSS
that probably dashes any chance of it’s app store matching the iPhone’s then, since games, proper or not, make up such a large proportion of most app stores