Palm unveiled its new device and OS today at the CES tradeshow in Las Vegas. Engadget had great live coverage.
The launch shared some similar points to Microsoft's Windows 7/WM7 demos from yesterday as both Palm and Microsoft seek to emphasize the mobile browser as the entry point for mobile applications and services while creating a unified messaging interface based on the email inbox to present email, presence, social networking status, and photo posts in a single entry point.
The result is that messaging on the device becomes the entry point for cloud services.
The new Palm Pre features both a touch screen and slide-out keyboard powered by its new OS. From a messaging standpoint Palm's new WebOS features "Synergy sync" which automatically manages contacts across Facebook, Google, and Outlook thus becoming the control point for the social address book. The messaging inbox consolidates both email and IM services. Notification updates from applications and new messages from email and IM are surfaced at the top level of the device OS.
While Palm promised rapid and easy integration of third party services and applications it gave no information on whether the OS will be open source or have an SDK opening compenents to third parties. It also did not address how third parties would achieve distribution across its OS and devices. New devices launching today must address both of these topics to gain relevance against the iPhone, Android, and RIM platforms.