Major Palm Announcement At CES?

Palm has started sending out invitations to the media for an event they are hosing at the 2010 CES show in Las Vegas. In 2009 they launched WebOS to much fanfare and launched the Pre nearly six months later. What could they be announcing at the 2010 show?Palm InfoCenter has a copy of the invite, which says the event will be at the Venetian Hotel on January 7th, 11am Pacific time. It is an invite only event.

Whatever they are announcing it won't be as big as the WebOS announcement was last year. More than likely it will be along the lines of a 2.0 release of the platform or a number of new devices. The Pre was a good start, though it has had its share of complaints about the keyboard. The recently released Pixi was really more of a value play as opposed to getting smartphone junkies excited. It would be nice to see a few new form factors come out, including one where a larger keyboard slides out from the side while the screen switches into landscape mode.

There are really two areas though that Palm needs to address. The first is getting the platform on other networks in the US. Eric Zeman pointed out earlier today that Verizon is just around the corner and that will be an enormous help. It is difficult to make a device or platform really successful when it isn't on at least one of the two major networks in the US - Verizon or AT&T.

The other thing they need to address is the rate at which apps are developed. Android has over 16,000 apps available for it while WebOS has far fewer and they seem to trickle out a few a day. Perhaps if Verizon sells a ton of devices, developers will take note.