“Linux is our platform for the future,” affirmed Dr. Dave Nagel, delivering a keynote talk to an audience of 1,000 attendees at PalmSource's annual developer event, renamed from “devcon” to “Mobile Summit” this year. Nagel talked little about Linux, however, focusing instead on wireless opportunities, 3G consumer and enterprise data services, and the need for Palm developers to partner with network carriers.

PalmSource completed its acquisition of Linux smartphone software vendor ChinaMobile Soft (CMS) in February, promising to unveil its Linux strategy at this year's devcon.

With 400,000 developers, PalmOS has the largest community of mobile developers in the world, Nagel said, and Palm is well positioned to capitalize on a huge trend toward connected mobile devices. The PDA market represented 15 million units per year at its peak, Nagel said, while 700 million phones will sell this year.

PalmOS developers are currently stuck with a single-threaded real-time operating system that can't support the kinds of applications that are needed to fully exploit 3G data services, however. “I don't care what OS it is, just give me threads,” said Thomas E. Link, an advisory software engineer with IBM attending the keynote. Link develops enterprise software that synchronizes client applications with corporate resources. “We're dying to do synchronization and replication in the background, without resorting to hacks that emulate multitasking,” Links said.

Nagel entreatied Palm developers to move to the Cobalt API announced at last years event, promising that Cobalt applications would be “absolutely compatible” with PalmSource's future Linux-based operating system products. Palm developers, however, have been slow to embrace Cobalt, because it has not been clear when — or if — Cobalt devices would actually reach market.

“I come here every year to find out what's going to be in the next version of PalmOS,” said Bryan Nystrom, CTO of Natara Software, a small company that makes project management software that synchronizes with Microsoft applications. “Last year, the message was 'move up to Cobalt,' but there are no Cobalt devices. For us, it would be a lot easier to move to Windows Mobile than to Linux, so we want to find out if Linux is for real. It's reaching the point where application developers can't afford to support only PalmOS anymore.”

In addition to touting Palm's future on 3G smartphone, Nagel introduced a variety of partner companies, including PalmOne — which will be taking over the “Palm” brand, Nagel said. Other partners included Cingular, IBM, Orange, and Chinese ODM GSPDA.

Cingular's Abhi Ingle showed off Cingular's 3G roadmap, and encouraged Palm developers to build applications that promote network usage

Nagel also touted the success of several PalmOS-powered phones, including the Treo 650, and the Kyocera 7135. The Treo has sold more than 400,000 units in the US, Nagel said, while the Kyocera phone has sold more than 500,000 — more than the total number of Windows Mobile phones from all vendors combined, Nagel said.

Nagel called email the “killer application” for mobile devices, with only two percent of the 650,000 US business email users currently enjoying mobile email access. “We've got 638 million people to go, in terms of the opportunity that's out there,” Nagel said.

Almost 50 percent of Palm developers are currently working on wireless products, up from 2 percent two years ago, Nagel said, proving that the community, though large, can still react quickly to emerging market trends. Additionally, between 30 and 40 percent are building business applications, Nagel said.

Of PalmSource's acquisition of China MobileSoft, Nagel said only that the company has been renamed PalmSource Asia, and that its Linux-based products will be leveraged in the global market.

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