Todays & Tomorrows Technology

Palm have announced their Q4 and full-year 2009 financial results [pdf link], covering the period up to the end of May 29th. Palm chairman and CEO Jon Rubinstein revealed full-year revenues of $735.9m and gross profit of $159.8m; he went on to describe the launch of the Palm Pre and webOS shortly after the period finished as when the company “officially reentered the race”. That’s good news, because while smartphone shipments in Q4 rose 6-percent from Q3, year-over-year decline for the quarter was a huge 62-percent.
In Q4 2009, then, Palm report total revenues of $86.8m, with gross profit of $20.1m and a gross margin of 23.1-percent. That amounts to a net loss to common shareholders of $105m, or $0.78 per diluted common share; that’s more than twice the net loss in fiscal-year 2008.

Rubinstein remained positive, however, suggesting that the Pre was a “major milestone in Palm’s transformation” and pointing to “a large group of developers waiting to build great applications for Palm webOS”. He also tipped “a new product pipeline” which is presumed to include the Palm Eos, also based on webOS.

Developers playing with Palm’s webOS have discovered a method whereby software can be installed on an unhacked Pre. The system emails a .ipk link to the app, and seemingly takes advantage of a loophole in the platform to bypass Palm’s security.

For the end-user, installing an app is as straightforward as tapping on a link in their email and allowing the Pre’s browser to open it. That automatically downloads and installs the software; currently the only publicly available app is a proof-of-concept that installs a non-functional shortcut icon to the Pre’s launcher.

Frankly, we’re fully expecting Palm to step in and put a stop to this sort of software distribution with an update to webOS. Not only does it present a security risk, where naive Pre users may click to load a malware app without realizing, but it bypasses the official app store and thus denies Palm themselves any cut of paid-app profits (or the ability to decline certain apps it doesn’t want released). They’re likely to put more emphasis on the security reasons, though.

Hacking the Pre isn’t just about running Doom on the smartphone: it also promises to unlock currently forbidden functionality such as tethering. The Pre Dev Wiki had been one such team working on that, but after a “polite” warning from Palm themselves have ceased publicly discussing it: it seems Palm is concerned, not that webOS might be modified, but that Sprint may demand the manufacturer step in and prevent users overstepping their contracts.
Sprint do not currently offer a tethering option for the Pre, and as such attempting to use it as an external 3G modem for a laptop or other device would contravene a subscriber’s contract. If that happened, Palm obviously expect the carrier to turn up on their doorstep looking for the hackers responsible to be curtailed, something Palm doesn’t seem particularly concerned about doing themselves.

Of course, we’ve already seen one hack of the Sprint CDMA Pre which bypassed the carrier’s activation and turned it into a WiFi-only device. That can’t be something Sprint would find particularly appealing either, especially if it’s as easy as reported. This seems a fine line for Palm to be walking: they seem to recognize that supporting – or at least not hindering – fan community tinkering can in fact boost the profile and appeal of a new platform, as happened with the original iPhone, but they of course have to keep on the good side of their carrier partners.

Sure, once you get Doom onto a device there isn't much stopping you in the homebrew department, but we thought the implementation of an NES emulator on webOS outside of the Classic environment was worth noting -- even if it happens to be astoundingly easy to pull off. All it requires is a quick trip to root on the device a compile of the FCEUltra NES emulator for Linux and bam, it's good to go. Hit up the read link for instructions (we're sure we're simplifying things just a tad) -- and no, the incredible appropriateness of using a Contra ROM to kick things off hasn't escaped us.