Palm’s last chance for smartphone relevancy?

Palm Inc.’s new touchscreen smartphone, featuring the company’s long awaited Nova operating system, should be unveiled later this week and aims to attract users looking for an app-loaded consumer phone that also doubles as a business device.

The company is expected to officially launch the Linux-based mobile OS at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2009, which kicks off Thursday in Las Vegas. Palm is also rumoured to be showcasing the OS on a brand new device, which will reportedly feature a large iPhone-like touchscreen and a slide-down QWERTY keyboard.

But while the market might be big enough to welcome yet another mobile OS, some industry analysts argue the developer community will not be as accommodating.

“The biggest challenge [for Palm] is how to address the developers,” Ryan Reith, senior research analyst at IDC Corp., said. “Clearly, we’ve seen the secrets to success moving forward for these high-level operating systems and it’s around the developer following.”

But according to Rob Enderle, principal analyst at San Jose, Calif.-based The Enderle Group, most developers have already placed their bets in the mobile OS sweepstakes. Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. and Apple Inc. already have huge mobile development communities attached to their respective platforms, he said, which could leave Palm left out in the cold.

“Developers are spread really thin as it is and in the current economic situation they have to pick which platform is going to generate money for their work,” he said. “It’s hard to get money out of a platform that has just started shipping, compared to something like the iPhone, where there are enough phones out there already to live on.”

And with more Android-based devices sure to be on the horizon later this year, Reith said Google’s development community will likely attract a lot of attention as well.

Ken Dulaney, a mobile and wireless analyst with Gartner Inc., agreed, saying that barring any surprises with Nova’s announcement, Palm is going to have a lot of trouble attracting talent.

“Why would a developer want to write for a proprietary OS that is backed by a hardware manufacturer who has had serious difficulties?” he asked. “If it was licensed then OK, but if it’s proprietary, I think it’s a bad move on Palm’s part. They should have licensed Android.”

“It’s one thing to be proprietary when it’s Apple or RIM, but not Palm,” Dulaney added.

The biggest upside for Palm, according to Enderle, is last month’s much needed US$100-million equity investment from Elevation Partners, a venture capital firm co-founded by U2 lead singer Bono.