It seems that reports of Palm's death were greatly exaggerated. Heck - I'd written them off completely but the new Palm Pre has buoyed the hopes of a market that's all but dominated, at least as far as mindshare goes, by the iPhone. As far as hardware goes, the Pre is unspectacular. It seems to be something of a cross between the iPhone and the HTC Touch Duo. The magic of the Pre is in the software.

The all new webOS replaces the aged Palm OS. Personally, I hope it signals the beginning of the end of Palm's licensing agreement with Microsoft for Windows Mobile. While that arrangement probably saved Palm in the short term, it seems to have stifled the innovative spirit that established Palm as the leader of the handheld market. If Palm gets past the veiled threats that Apple has levelled with regards to patent infringement then it will have a product that is capable of competing with the iPhone's market cachet.

The biggest challenge that Palm faces is regaining their credibility. While they kept releasing incremental changes to the Treo form factor and sticking with either Palm OS or someone else's OS the market moved on. HTC has a stack of smartphone models on the market, there are plenty of solid offerings in the BlackBerry range and Nokia, Sony Ericcson and Motorola have so many different models on the market that it make my head swim.

Palm achieved something at CES this year that it's not been able to manage in some time - getting some positive spin. I predict that they'll also get on the netbook bandwagon with the Foleo 2 and will release it to market at the same time as the Pre. Armed with webOS, the Foleo and Pre could make a killer team,