Wireless

Palm's new Pre, running its WebOS mobile operating system.

(Credit: Corrine Schulze/CNET)

Palm took one giant step toward regaining its position as a relevant mobile computing company with the introduction of the Palm Pre Thursday.

If you missed out on Ina Fried's live coverage of Palm's press conference in Las Vegas at CES, here's a few basic details about the Pre (rhymes with glee). It's a touchscreen phone with a slide-out keyboard than runs WebOS, Palm's long-awaited new operating system formerly code-named Nova.

Sprint will be the exclusive launch carrier for the Pre, which comes with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, a 3.1-inch display, GPS, and 8GBs of storage, among other things. Palm did not announce a price for the Pre, but said it should be available some time in the first half of 2009.

Like the Apple's iPhone, Palm's Pre has a single button when the slide-out keyboard is shut. Everything on the screen can be controlled by gestures similar to the ones used on the iPhone, and the homescreen has four icons at the bottom for the most frequently used tasks, such as the phone, e-mail, and calendar.

Unlike the iPhone, it has the aforementioned hardware keyboard, and what appears to be a background notification system for applications. Apple has promised to roll out some sort of background notification system that lets applications send notifications to the user when they are running a different application, but they are well past their deadline of September 2008 for doing so.

We're awaiting many more details on the Pre, such as what it will cost, how application distribution will work, battery life, and multimedia support. Stay tuned for those.

LAS VEGAS--We're live at the Venetian Ballroom, moments away from the unveiling of the long-awaited new phone platform from Palm.

Ed Colligan, Palm CEO

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

10:54 a.m. PST: The consensus sentiment here is that Palm needs a home run if it is to compete with the likes of Apple and RIM.

10:55 a.m.: In very un-Palm-like fashion, the company has managed to keep a tight lid on the details of what it has in store, making this one of the most dramatic moments of the show.

11:00 a.m.: It's a swank room with a video playing on a giant video wall amid dim lights. Chairs are mixed in with wood end tables stocked with Smartwater and another fruity water called Function.

11:02 a.m.: Speech starting. Ex-Appler Jon Rubinstein, Palm's executive chairman, takes the stage. "Some of you are wondering what I am doing here at Palm."

11:03 a.m.: He notes that he moved to Mexico after leaving Apple. One day, he got a call from Elevation Partners' Roger McNamee and Fred Anderson (ex-Apple CEO).

"I was a pretty busy guy in Mexico," he said, showing a picture of himself in a hammock.

11:04 a.m.: He said that Ed Colligan (Palm's CEO) made a compelling pitch to help restore innovation at Palm.

11:05 a.m.: Rubinstein intros Ed Colligan.

11:07 a.m.: Colligan notes the company is looking forward. When Palm launched the original Pilot, it wasn't trying to compete with the Newton. "We thought about competing with pen and paper"

"Mobile is in our DNA," Colligan said. "We don't do computers...We don't do refrigerators."

11:08 a.m.: Colligan teases the new stuff, but takes us down Memory Lane. Talking about original Pilot.

11:11 a.m.: Talks about the Treo and how it helped stave off an era where everyone was carrying too many devices. But there's a new problem, he said. That's that information is all over the place: work systems, Gmail, Facebook, etc.

11:12 a.m.: Wouldn't it be nice if your contacts in Outlook showed up with the photos you have of them that are on Facebook? That's what we want to do, he said.

11:13 a.m.: "There are capabilities of it that can't be done on the desktop."

It's called the Palm WebOS.

LAS VEGAS--Cisco Systems plans to focus on the consumer market a lot more in the next three to five years, the company's CEO John Chambers said Wednesday during the company's press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show.

John Chambers, Cisco Systems CEO

(Credit: Cisco Systems)

This increased focus will likely mean a "steady stream of product announcements, partnership announcements and acquisitions" from the company as it grows this market, Chambers said.

Cisco initially got into the home networking business in 2003 with its acquisition of Linksys and it increased its presence a couple of years later with the acquisition of set-top box maker Scientific Atlanta. With these products as the corner stone of its consumer business, Cisco claims it has sold some 160 million home routers and set top boxes.

But Chambers said the company plans to make a much more aggressive push moving forward, especially over the next 12 months.

"We are really committed to this market and we're putting the whole company behind it," he said. "We will be very aggressive."

Chambers said he hopes to grow Cisco's consumer business to between $5 billion and $10 billion over the next few years.

Cisco has been talking about increasing its presence in the home for more than a year. And Wednesday it announced new home networking products and a bold new service designed for big media companies to help bring more rich content to consumers.

The first set of products come from the Cisco's Linksys home-networking business unit. And they're designed to let consumers share music throughout their home. The Wireless Home Audio system sends music over a standard Wi-Fi network to speakers in multiple rooms. The bundle of products, which starts at about $999 for two rooms, even allows music from Apple iPods and iTunes to be accessed through a single controller and played throughout the home.

Cisco also introduced a new Media Hub, a storage device that allows people to access content remotely over the Internet. The product, which comes in different storage capacities up to 500 gigabytes, starts at $299. In addition to providing remote access, the Media Hub provides back-up of digital files, such as photos and music.

And in an effort to help big media and entertainment companies provide richer interactive content to consumers, Cisco announced its new Eos hosted software platform. Cisco will offer the Eos technology as part of a service, which media and entertainment companies will use to create, manage, and grow online communities. The idea is to streamline the process for building new Web sites, while also allowing media companies to add interactivity and social-networking components.

Chambers said that more is to come over the next several months. But he emphasized that Cisco's focus on consumer electronics is not just about individual products, but about building a platform and an architecture that can be sustained in the future.

For all its fervor, Cisco's consumer ambitions may not be so easy to achieve. The consumer electronics market is full of competitors. For example, the home audio system that Cisco announced Wednesday is very similar to what's already offered from Sonos. And there are plenty of companies already offering media hubs. What's more Cisco's pricing is not much different from its competitors.

Additionally, Cisco is still struggling to provide a consistent brand to the market. Today's new products for the home are branded Linksys by Cisco. But the company is in the process of migrating its branding solely toward Cisco.

"Cisco is the main brand," said Ned Hooper, senior vice president of corporate development for Cisco's Consumer Business Group. "But we also have existing brands that have generated significant value. So Linksys will be a family brand."

Microsoft is preparing to announce Wednesday it has been selected as the search provider for Verizon mobile phones, beating out archrival Google and Yahoo, according to a Reuters report.

Yahoo shares spiked during mid-day trading as news surfaced that Verizon had chosen a mobile search provider, but then fell back to earth after the Microsoft disclosure.

There has been much speculation over the past year about who would sign the coveted search deal with Verizon, which is expected to overtake AT&T as the No. 1 U.S. carrier after Verizon closes on its purchase of Alltel, Reuters said. Increasingly, consumers and businesses are turning to their mobile phones as a means to interact with the Internet and advertisers are well aware of the trend.

Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg, revealed the carrier's search choice during a presentation at an investment conference, noting Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer is expected to make a similar announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Although Seidenberg did not delve into further details about the deal, it is expected to generate between $550 million to $650 million in guaranteed revenue a year.

For Yahoo and Google, the announcement is a blow to their mobile efforts.

Yahoo in November announced a deal with T-Mobile USA to power its search and mobile Web portal. And although Yahoo recently was able to extend its relationship with Verizon to provide its Web portal to computer users, it fell short in doing the same for Verizon's mobile customers.

Before there was the Series60 (S60) 5th Edition, Symbian already had a touch-screen alternative through UIQ Technology's interface. This was famously used in some of Motorola's first 3G handsets and Sony Ericsson's business-oriented P-series. These days, you can still find UIQ in some Walkman phones and the G-series from the Japanese-Swedish phone manufacturer.

But ever since Sony Ericsson announced that it will be using Windows Mobile for its flagship Xperia X1 device in early 2008 (or will it?), the fate of UIQ has hung in the balance. Now, almost a year on, the inevitable has happened--UIQ Technology has filed for bankruptcy. This should put to rest any dying hope that Sony Ericsson would revive its P-series using this Symbian interface.

The decision to pull the plug was made by Motorola and Sony Ericsson, co-owners of this software company. Clearly, these two phone manufacturers have already covered their bases when it comes to touch-screen operating systems, as they are both licensees of Windows Mobile and Google's Android platform.

Goodbye, UIQ, you have served many users well and will now transcend into the realm of smartphone history. You may be gone, but we are sure your Wikipedia page will always be there as a monument to your existence.

(Via Crave Asia)