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Comment by bradleyland | Hacker News Reader

Given the indecision of the HP board as of late, how can they expect developers to make any significant effort to develop for their platform?

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According to Palm Developer relations, because there's money to be made on an uncrowded platform. There are plenty of existing TouchPad owners thanks to the firesale, and those that use their devices are willing to pay to improve their experience (since the experience won't likely be improved by HP themselves long-term). And you might have more success short-term by selling smaller apps on the Palm Marketplace than you would fighting for space in Android's.

There are at least 4 million devices....

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApB67S7ETz4WdHd...

This is actually not a bad plan on Palm's part. Probably the only last-ditch plan I've seen that has a shot of working.

Am I the only person to think that this is a patently ridiculous line of thinking?

I've talked in 2002 or 2003 to a guy who was still developing fro BeOS at the time. Better have a near monopoly on an uncommon OS than be some invisible me-too :)

The question is: is there a profitable long-term market in the Touchpad?

Who actually bought the device? Corporations who will commit to long term usage (I doubt it) or tech nerds who will flash the device to run Android (leading to a different, well-populated market) or tech nerds who will use the device as is (and abandon it in a year or two)?

Honestly, this sounds like very short-term thinking on the part of Palm.

Someone at work bought two, one each for his under 6-year old sons so they wouldn't fight over them. Don't see that as a long-term market.

I bought the device because I honestly believe that WebOS is an interesting take on a tablet OS (and I like it much better over Android). However I will not be purchasing any apps on the device. I use it strictly as an eReader.

When it comes to app sales, does it really have to be stable long-term? I thought app development was already generally a short-term gambit anyway.

Not necessarily. At least a couple of devs I personally know have made more money on WebOS than Android (none of them developed for iOS so no idea about that).

And add to that how much more enjoyable it is to develop for WebOS and you get a winner.

I'd bet US$150 on that.

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