HP today announced it would acquire Autonomy, a massive enterprise software company, for $10 billion. It also announced that it would no longer develop mobile devices running Palm’s webOS mobile operating system, and that it is spinning off its personal systems group, which manufactures PCs.

The company reported quarterly revenue of $31.2 billion compared with $30.7 billion one year ago.  The company said that sales for the fourth fiscal period ending in October will be between $32.1 billion and $32.5 billion. That is below the average $34 billion estimate of Wall Street analysts.

HP’s chief executive Leo Apotheker was on the company’s quarterly earnings call to explain HP’s rationale for dumping webOS and making the massive purchase. Here’s a breakdown of what happened on the call.

For other angles on today’s HP news, see VentureBeat’s HP coverage.

2:05 p.m.: Apotheker said, “Today is all about raising shareholder value, transforming HP for the future.” Apotheker has been CEO of the company for about nine months.

2:06 p.m.: “Sales of the TouchPad are not meeting our expectations,” Apotheker said. The company will sharpen its focus on cloud and software starting today.

2:07 p.m.: The competitive landscape for personal computers has grown too complex, Apotheker said. HP’s PC business has not maintained the traction as tablets have begun to take over, he said.

2:09 p.m.: Apotheker said HP was successful in launching a new operating system, but WebOS devices have not gained enough traffic in the marketplace with consumers. Due to significant competition and rapidly changing competition, the company will no longer produce webOS devices, he said.

2:11 p.m.: Apotheker has appointed John Visentin for the company’s enterprise cloud division, and he will report directly to Apotheker. Visentin takes over for Ann Livermore, who stepped down from the position in June.

2:12 p.m.: HP is doing “everything it can” to protect its customers from “Oracle’s anti-customer behavior,” Apotheker said.

2:15 p.m.: HP expects to complete the Autonomy acquisition by the end of the year, Apotheker said. Autonomy will continue to operate separately and report directly to Apotheker, he said.

2:17 p.m.: “We are building an excellent software business,” Apotheker said. No mention of hardware — or even printers.

2:18 p.m.: “All of the decisive moves I’ve made will provide a definitive return to shareholders,” Apotheker said. “We’re focusing on what needs to be fixed, what needs to be shut down and what needs to be separated.”

2:19 p.m.: “These challenges and the transformation we are undertaking are taking several quarters to resolve,” Apotheker said in response to lowered guidance. “I know investors don’t like this and I feel their pain, but as CEO I believe in transparency. I’m taking ownership of these decisions.”

2:20 p.m.: HP’s CFO Cathy Lesjak is going over the numbers for the company’s third quarter. You can find a full report of the company’s earnings here.

2:23 p.m.: “About a year ago, we made a bet on webOS and set clear metrics and milestones. The sell-through of the product was not what we expected,” Lesjak said. “Our intention was to solidify webOS as a clear number 2 for mobile platforms. It quickly became clear that pricing parity would not improve.”

2:24 p.m.: “We would expect a larger loss in Q4 if we continued to operating webOS in its current form,” Lesjak said. “Continuing investing in webOS would take one to two years and increase risk without a clear return.”

(As a side note, HP’s TouchPad was on the market for 49 days before the company decided to kill off the webOS hardware division. By comparison, Microsoft’s Kin phones were on the market for 55 days before Microsoft killed that platform. Seems like the shelf life for experimental mobile tech is sometimes pretty short.)

2:32 p.m.: Revenue from HP’s software division was up 20 percent year-over-year. Its security software is generating double-digit growth, Lesjak said.

2:37 p.m.: “This effort will require patience, but the clear objective is to drive long-term shareholder value,” Lesjak said.

2:39 p.m.: Business in Asia-Pacific grew while business in other regions declined, Apotheker said. Consumer business declined while commercial business increased, he said.

2:41 p.m.: One analyst asked, “Did you cut enough?” Apotheker replied indirectly, saying that investors have to recognize that the restructuring is a “multi-quarter journey.”

2:43 p.m.: HP’s imaging and printing group (IPG) is an important and profitable business for HP, Apotheker said (unlike webOS, obviously). “They have been disrupting traditional printing markets as more markets shift to digital,” he said.

2:45 p.m.: “With the acquisition we announced today, we can accelerate that strategy and provide IPG with additional differentiated IP in verticals such as public service and financials,” Apotheker said.

2:49 p.m.: HP plans to spin off HP’s personal systems group (PSG), but Apotheker won’t comment on how that might happen or how it will be accounted for on HP’s books.

2:50 p.m.: “The (webOS) software has been received very well. The developers like it and users like it, and we are looking at all the options for people who need this kind of software,” Apotheker said.

2:59 p.m.: “We have one issue in our company: That’s productivity and salesforce. We want to build a better platform so we can extract way more value out of our salesforce, and we’re going to have regular cadence and discipline,” Apotheker said.

3:01 p.m.: “We expect the ongoing operating expenses in the remaining pieces of the webOS business is probably 1 to 2 cents a quarter, the run-rate expense is coming down dramatically,” Lesjak said. “The loss of $332M in corporate investments, you can attribute that pretty much to Palm.”

3:02 p.m.: Autonomy will be run as a separate entity, but the company will look to “identify as many synergies as they can as quickly as possible,” Apotheker said. The first is to give Autonomy access to HP’s market channels.

3:05 p.m.: Revenue from 3Par, which HP acquired last year, is up triple-digits, Lesjak said.

3:06 p.m.: “PSG is part of HP and it will be managed in a very normal way. The team and everyone at HP will continue to work with PSG as if they are a normal day-to-day business, that’s the expectation we have,” Apotheker said.

Details are almost non-existent about what this move by HP will actually look like. But Apple made a similar move, bringing some features from its mobile operating system iOS to its desktop operating system. Lion, for example, features additional multi-touch gestures and some other features present on Apple’s iPhone operating system.

The move makes sense, given that HP has a number of touch-enabled desktop computers and an app store for touch-based applications on desktops. Bradley said additional details would come throughout the year.

The announcement came at the end of HP’s presentation in San Francisco today, where the company unveiled two new smartphones and an impressive WebOS-powered tablet.

Judging from the renders, it looks like the tablets feature no buttons and will be entirely gesture-based (something we’re hearing might be true of the iPad 2 as well). We also spot a front-facing camera for video conferencing (but no rear camera), and three speakers along the sides of the tablet’s thin edges. Sources tell Engadget that the devices are running 1.2 gigahertz processors, but no other specifications are known at the moment.

HP is reportedly aiming to release WiFi, AT&T 3G, and Verizon LTE versions of the Opal in September, with an AT&T LTE 4G version coming in July 2012. Not surprisingly, the Opal is being positioned as an ereading-friendly device due to its more portable 7-inch size.

Judging from what we saw at CES, 2011 is going to be a year full of compelling tablets. HP will be squaring off with Motorola’s Xoom, the iPad 2, and RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook. There’s certainly a lot of potential for HP to wow us with Palm’s webOS software on tablets, but hopefully we’ll see the devices sooner than September. Otherwise, Palm may end up repeating its history with the Palm Pre by delivering a compelling product long after consumers actually want it.

I may be a little biased as VentureBeat’s lead mobile writer, but this year made it clear to me why mobile is one of the most exciting and vibrant areas in technology right now. The research firm IDC predicted in September that smartphone adoption will grow around 55 percent this year over last, and it doesn’t look like that will slow down anytime soon. Come next year, we can expect cheaper and more capable smartphones, and tablets that can finally stand up to the iPad.

But before we enter 2011, let’s take a look back at some of the best and worst stories in mobile news this year.

The Best

The iPad finally gets the tablet right, others follow suit

Apple’s wildly successful tablet was one of the worst kept secrets in the technology industry by the end of 2009, when multiple reports pointed to the fact that Apple was gearing up to introduce a tablet device. But not everybody was excited for yet another computing platform (myself included). But, Apple being Apple, it managed to defy expectations when the iPad was announced in January, and it continued to do so as the tablet sold like crazy, surpassing 7.5 million units sold in October.

Mere speculation of the iPad sparked an entirely new wave of tablets earlier this year, but most of those early entries failed, like the HP Slate and Microsoft Courier (more on the latter below). As it was becoming clearer that the iPad was a success, pretty much every major technology company threw their hats into the tablet arena, with the majority adopting Android as their tablet platform of choice. While Samsung’s Galaxy Tab is the only legitimate Android iPad competitor right now, we can expect even stronger competition next year. RIM also unveiled its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, which looks cool, but didn’t do much to negate the company’s failure to innovate this year (see below).

Android adoption grows like wildfire thanks to killer devices

Google’s Android platform wasn’t truly successful until the release of the Motorola Droid in November 2009, which was buoyed by a strong anti-Apple marketing campaign. Verizon apparently spent $100 million advertising the Droid, an investment which went on to help the entire Android platform in 2011. Earlier this month, Google’s Andy Rubin said that 300,000 Android phones are now being activated every day (nearly 10 million a month), up from around 50,000 activations at the beginning of the year. In comparison, Apple recently revealed that it shipped 14.1 million iPhones in its last quarter.

We can also point to the slew of great Android devices this year as a driving force behind the platform’s success. The year started off with the first true “Google phone”, the Nexus One, which Google attempted to sell on its own through an online store. That plan didn’t work out so well for Google, but the Nexus One heralded other superpowered Android phones like the Evo 4G and Droid X. In the second half of the year, Samsung unveiled its ambitious Galaxy S line of phones across all major US carriers, which we’ll discuss further below.

Basically, if you were on the lookout for an Android phone this year, it was tough to be disappointed.

Apple’s iPhone 4: Its most polished entry yet

Despite the many great Android phones that hit the market this year, Apple held its own with the iPhone 4 — which brought a sexy new design, high-definition video recording, front facing camera and FaceTime for video conferencing, and a high-resolution “Retina Display.” Apple didn’t increase the iPhone’s screen size to compete with larger Android phones, but the iPhone 4’s display looks so good it didn’t seem to matter that it was still 3.5-inches.

But while the iPhone 4 is definitely one of the best phones to come out this year, it isn’t without it’s problems, as we’ll discuss below.

Samsung comes out of nowhere to become a major Android manufacturer

Samsung has been building mobile phones for years now, and it’s also released a couple of low-end Android phones. So you can imagine the surprise when, seemingly out of nowhere, Samsung unveiled an entire family of high-end Android smartphones featuring its droolworthy 4-inch Super AMOLED screens and its powerful 1-gigahertz Hummingbird processor. And the company didn’t just focus on hardware — Samsung also managed to bring its Galaxy S phones across all major U.S carriers.

The company’s ambition has seemed to pay off. Samsung announced in November that it shipped 3 million Galaxy S phones in the US, and earlier this month we reported that it stole the top Android manufacturer throne from Motorola. Much of the hardware in the Galaxy S phones went into Samsung’s Galaxy Tab tablet, which has sold 1 million units two months after it launched. And of course, Samsung’s Galaxy S experience led directly to the Nexus S, the second Google phone and Nexus One successor.

Front-facing cameras for mobile video chat

Before we knew the official specifications of the iPhone 4, it was widely known that it would pack a front-facing camera for mobile video conferencing. At the time, I argued that the iPhone 4 would spur on a wave of innovation in mobile video chat, something I believed would be the next killer feature in smartphones. When Apple finally unveiled the iPhone 4, its FaceTime mobile video chat software was one of the biggest announcements. Finally, we had a simple way to initiate mobile video chats from our phones as easily as making a standard phone call.

While FaceTime is certainly restricted by only working on WiFi networks, Apple made the technology even more useful by bringing the software to Macs and the most recent iPod Touch version (which also sports cameras).

Android phones like the Evo 4G, MyTouch 4G and Nexus S also feature front-facing cameras, and I suspect the feature will become even more common next year. The new wave of front cameras also opened the doors for mobile video chat startups like Tango, which has created mobile video chat apps that will work across the iPhone and Android.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 is surprisingly cool

Perhaps it was the low expectations going in, but count me as shocked that Microsoft was actually able to make a desirable smartphone platform in Windows Phone 7 — one that offered some key difference from its competitors, as well as an attractive and refreshing user interface.

Microsoft announced WP7 in February, but didn’t officially launch the phones until October. And by that point, it was obvious that Microsoft was going to do whatever it took to regain its relevancy in mobile devices. The company reportedly spent around $500 million marketing WP7, and racked up about 15,000 app developers a few weeks after the phones hit shelves. Microsoft announced yesterday that its partners have shipped 1.5 million phones to carriers and retailers, which doesn’t tell us much about actual users, but it’s a sign that consumers definitely want the phones.

Microsoft knew what it needed to succeed: Attractive high-end smartphones, a strong app community and a modern OS. With Windows Phone 7, it managed to put together all of the right pieces to deliver a platform that can just about match the iPhone and Android, even if it is several years too late.

Worst

Microsoft’s Kin: The phones nobody wanted

Kin. Need I say anything else? From the moment Microsoft announced the Kin phones, its misguided attempt at capturing the youth market, it was clear that Kin was an idea several years too late. They were severely restricted phones that had subscription plans just as expensive as real smartphones. So it was no surprise when Microsoft, surely with plenty of egg on its face, ended up killing the project several weeks after the phones hit stores.

At the time of the Kin’s death, I wrote:

What started as an ambitious attempt to justify Microsoft’s purchase of Danger, the company behind the popular Sidekick messaging phones, turned into a misguided attempt at trying to figure out what young people find cool. Never mind that many teenagers and twenty-somethings had already moved on to legitimate smartphone platforms.

The Kin phones lacked an application store and seemingly basic functionality like a calendar and instant messaging software — a glaring omission for something aimed at “connected” youth. Ultimately, the Kin’s failure is one Microsoft needs to remember: Instead of trying to force-feed a lackluster product to consumers, perhaps it should devote more time on creating something people actually want — like it did with the Xbox 360.

Microsoft kills the Courier dual-screen “digital journal”

At a time when every company seemed hell-bent on taking on the iPad with tablets of their own, Microsoft’s Courier was a breath of fresh air. Courier was a dual-screened “digital journal” that was touch-screen capable, but also featured a stylus pen for hand written text, diagrams and more. Video demonstrations of the product made it seem like the evolution of the digital planner, combined with a personal journal and web-enabled tablet.

It was an ambitious move for Microsoft — so of course the company killed it before the project even got off the ground.

iPhone 4 design issues: Antennagate, glassgate and the elusive white iPhone 4

As beautiful as Apple’s iPhone 4 may be, it became clear over the course of the year that Apple may have actually over-designed the phone to the point where its looks was interfering with its functionality.

The first big issue was antennagate: As soon as the iPhone 4 started getting into consumers’ hands, many began to notice that they could repeatedly kill their iPhone’s reception by holding the lower-left corner of the device. This time around, Apple made the device’s antenna an integral part of its design, and it appeared as if that allowed users to easily block reception. The issue became so widely known that Apple CEO Steve Jobs held an unprecedented press event to address the issue, where he mentioned that it’s fairly easy to block any phone’s reception in a similar manner. Jobs admitted that Apple isn’t perfect, and instituted a program to offer free cases to every iPhone 4 owner.

But the iPhone 4’s troubles didn’t stop there. Several gadget sites eventually reported on another phenomenon, dubbed “Glassgate”, where certain cases that slid onto the back of the iPhone could trap dirt and debris, eventually leading to scratches and cracks on its rear glass panel. Apple never admitted to the issue, but ended up removing sliding cases from its online stores and retail locations. The company is reportedly investigating just how widespread the issue is. It doesn’t appear to be affecting as many users as antennagate, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple is keen on avoiding any further controversy with the iPhone 4.

The iPhone 4’s design was also reportedly the reason we never saw a white version of the device. Apple showed off white iPhone 4s when it was first announced, but that version never found its way to stores. Apparently, the white iPhone 4’s glass back was leaking in light — to the point where it was washing out pictures taken by the device’s camera. The issue was apparently discovered at the last-minute by Apple. The company ended up delaying the release of the white iPhone 4 three times without explanation– now it’s expected to land some time in Spring 2011.

HP buys Palm … and does nothing with it

Following lackluster sales of the Palm Pre and Pixi, former mobile leader Palm was in a tough spot at the beginning of the year, and it quickly became obvious that the company was looking to sell. HP ended up snagging the company for a cool $1.2 billion after a frenzied bidding war from four other major companies. The acquisition showed that HP was serious about becoming a player in the smartphone business, and we argued it had the potential to completely reshape the mobile computing landscape.

That may still happen eventually, but for now it doesn’t look like HP has done much with Palm. In October, the company announced the next version of Palm’s innovative webOS operating system, but at the same time it revealed the Palm Pre 2, which was nothing more than a speed upgrade to the original Pre. At a time when killer Android phones were coming left and right, it seemed downright crazy that Palm still didn’t have a major new handset. At least HP seems interested in bringing webOS to tablets early next year with the “PalmPad.”

RIM and Nokia continue their downward spiral into irrelevancy

I suppose it was too much to ask to see some spark of innovation from either Research in Motion or Nokia this year. Both companies managed to release new flagship devices that somehow feel several years too late.

RIM unveiled the BlackBerry Torch in August, it’s first attempt at combining a multitouch screen with its beloved BlackBerry hardware keyboard, which ran its new BlackBerry 6 operating system. Unfortunately, the new OS wasn’t the major upgrade that RIM needed to compete with more modern competitors, and the Torch was hampered by a slow processor and low display resolution. In the end, it was a minor release when RIM needed something major. Next year RIM may release a phone featuring the next-generation OS on its PlayBook tablet, but who knows when that will actually happen.

Nokia faced similar software problems with its N8 smartphone. In my review, I found the N8’s hardware to be impressive, but it was ultimately hampered by its aging Symbian OS. Nokia too is gearing up to release a next-generation OS next year, dubbed Meego, together with Intel. But Meego has seen some serious delays, and unless it comes out early next year, it risks being too little, too late, for Nokia.

[Photo via Ed Yourdon]

Now things have come full circle, and Sprint — which at one point heralded the Palm Pre as its flagship device — has taken the phone out of its stores and signaled the end of its life.

Palm said it expected thousands of developers to quickly begin making applications for the platform. The unfortunate truth was that all those developers flocked first to the iPhone operating system, and then to Google’s Android operating system. To date, there are around 300,000 apps on the Apple App Store and around 100,000 on the Android marketplace.

Now that Sprint has all but killed support for the Pre, the major damage may come from a lack of developers. Most Pre users ended up on Sprint, and Sprint’s move could serve as a signal for them to upgrade to a more powerful phone. With a smaller user base, more developers will likely end up turning to the iPhone operating system, iOS, or Google’s Android to remain relevant.

A slightly upgraded Palm Pre and Palm Pixi — it’s smaller, underpowered sister — have found their way to Verizon but have been more or less unnoticed. That’s prompted Verizon to slash the prices of the two phones to $49.99 for the Pre and $29.99 for the Pixi — both with two-year contracts. So developers probably won’t be getting any help on Verizon’s end, either.

And Palm has suffered a slew of high-level departures. WebOS user interface designer Matias Duarte left Palm to work on Android at Google, WebOS notification mastermind Rich Gerringer moved to Apple, and former senior VP of product development Mike Bell went to Intel. Peter Skillman, the lead designer behind the Palm Pre, then decided to take off.

Sprint Nextel’s highly publicized launch of the Palm Pre smartphone failed to turn around losses in the company’s subscriber base yet. In the quarter after the Pre’s launch, the company lost $384 million — compared to $344 million loss in the same time a year ago. Part of that probably had to do with Palm waiting to launch the phone until after Apple released the iPhone 3GS.

The olive branch finally came when Hewlett-Packard announced it would buy palm for $1.2 billion. During a conference call discussing the acquisition, HP executives emphasized that the deal to acquire smartphone maker Palm was about more than phones. Executive vice president Todd Bradley described Palm’s WebOS operating system as something that can also power tablet computers (or, as HP prefers to call them, “slates”) and the low-end laptops known as netbooks.

There’s obviously a lot of potential for WebOS as is evident in the price HP paid to get it. HP also recently announced the next iteration of WebOS, as well as a new version of the Palm Pre that will make its way to Verizon in the coming months. But it might be too little, too late, with Android and Google clearly leading the pack in terms of App developers.

Ari Jaaksi, former head of Nokia’s next-generation Meego platform, is headed to the company, AllThingsD reports. He’ll be joined by new hires from Samsung and within HP.

We have confirmed with Palm that Jaaksi has joined up as senior vice president of WebOS, the company’s mobile operating system. He’s relocating to the Bay Area, starting at the company in November, and will lead the WebOS engineering team.

His hire is a rare bit of good news for Palm, which has been losing high-profile employees for the past several months. Most recently, Palm Pre designer Peter Skillman left the company and eventually moved to Nokia as head of Meego user experience.

In April, Palm lost Michael Abbott, its senior vice president of software and services, to Twitter. He was viewed as a key force behind WebOS’s software-development tools, which were popular with a small but vital set of mobile-app developers. Palm offered stay packages to other key employees to keep them from straying. Shortly after that, HP announced it would buy Palm for $1.2 billion.

WebOS user interface designer Matias Duarte left Palm to work on Android at Google, WebOS notification mastermind Rich Gerringer moved to Apple, and former senior VP of product development Mike Bell went to Intel.

In other news, Palm also gained Victoria Coleman, former head of Samsung’s research and development center in San Jose, Calif. She’ll be spearheading app development for future versions of webOS.

Perhaps as a sign of Palm’s importance, talent from HP will also move into the company: Former SVP of HP consumer applications Steven McArther will lead product marketing for Palm; Enrique Lores, SVP of HP’s Personal Systems Group sales, will oversee Palm sales; and HP SVP of product development Steve Manser will head up product management.

Palm could certainly benefit from the new talent, because it has a lot to prove. New versions of webOS need to compete with quickly evolving competitors like Android and the iPhone OS, and the company desperately needs new devices — its apparent minor refresh with the Palm Pre 2 certainly isn’t enough to remain competitive.

Photo via UMPCPortal

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The Pre 2 will apparently run a 1GHz processor and feature 512MB of RAM (the same as the Pre Plus). SFR says it will pack a “flatter screen” and a “more refined” design. Finally, it will run Palm’s new webOS 2.0 software, which will offer faster boot times.

I’m personally hoping that the carrier is just running an old shot of the Palm Pre to advertise the new phone, because I was definitely expecting Palm/HP to revamp the device for its next iteration. At the very least, I hope the Palm Pre 2′s screen is around 3.7-inches — which would let users take better advantage of webOS’s delectable user interface than they can on the current Pre’s 3.1-inch display.

SFR also says that the Pre 2 will bring more push functionality than the original phone — specifically with Facebook push integration for messages, events, wall posts, and chat. Hopefully the device will see more push integration than just Facebook.

Surprisingly, SFR hasn’t removed its online entry for the phone, despite all of the attention it’s been getting. Either the carrier simply doesn’t care, or Palm/HP will soon be making an official announcement about the device (and perhaps a touchscreen-only Pre?). Hopefully the company will wait until next week to let the Windows Phone 7 furor die down.

Getting content noticed is a challenge for everyone making apps. Join us at DiscoveryBeat 2010 and hear secrets from top industry executives about how to break through and profit in the new cross-platform app ecosystem. From metrics to monetization, we’ll take an in depth look at the best discovery strategies and why they’re working. See the full agenda here. The conference takes place on October 18 at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. To register, click here. Hurry though. Tickets are limited, and going fast.

The news isn’t a huge surprise: We’ve been hearing since June that HP is actively working on new webOS phones. When HP announced that it would buy Palm for $1.2 billion in April, it was also readily assumed that HP’s massive resources would ensure that more webOS devices would see the light of day.

As we reported a few days ago, one of the new webOS devices may be an iPhone-like smartphone without a physical keyboard. HP is also gearing up to deliver a webOS tablet, potentially dubbed the “PalmPad”, early next year as well.

The more surprising news would have been if HP decided to delay its new webOS phones until later next year. Right now, the company desperately needs new devices — both the Palm Pre and Pixi are showing their age when compared to newer devices with bigger screens, video conferencing cameras, and better app ecosystems. HP could also stand to bring the webOS devices to carriers other than Verizon and Sprint, although that would entail making sure that they’re compatible with CDMA cellular networks.

Getting content noticed is a challenge for everyone making apps. Join us at DiscoveryBeat 2010 and hear secrets from top industry executives about how to break through and profit in the new cross-platform app ecosystem. From metrics to monetization, we’ll take an in depth look at the best discovery strategies and why they’re working. See the full agenda here. The conference takes place on October 18 at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. To register, click here. Hurry though. Tickets are limited, and going fast.

The news follows some major shifts in Nokia’s management: Ex-Microsofter Stephen Elop replaced Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo as Nokia’s chief executive officer in September, and a few days afterward its head of mobile solutions Anssi Vanjoki also resigned. We later learned that Nokia’s chairman, Jorma Ollila, would be stepping down in 2012.

The management shakeup is to be expected. With new leadership, Nokia needs to take a hard look at its current executive and creative lineup to stay fresh and compete with the iPhone and Android. It also means that we should expect more inspired hires like Palm Pre designer Peter Skillman, who was recently brought on as the head of user experience and services for MeeGo.

Noka just recently started shipping its latest flagship device, the N8, which runs on its new Symbian^3 platform.

What does this mean for MeeGo? Nokia previously said that it expects to release its first device featuring the next-generation operating system — which is being developed in conjunction with Intel — this year. But now it doesn’t seem like the company will be able to keep up with that timeline. Nokia says that it will have further updates on MeeGo before the end of the year — something which seems to foretell of a 2011 delay.

Via Engadget, image via UMPC Portal

Getting content noticed is a challenge for everyone making apps. Join us at DiscoveryBeat 2010 and hear secrets from top industry executives about how to break through and profit in the new cross-platform app ecosystem. From metrics to monetization, we’ll take an in depth look at the best discovery strategies and why they’re working. See the full agenda here. The conference takes place on October 18 at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. To register, click here. Hurry though. Tickets are limited, and going fast.

The news doesn’t come as a huge surprise. While Palm spent a lot of time hyping up the Pre’s keyboard before its launch, there’s still room for a webOS device that only rocks a touchscreen. The many consumers choosing to pick up iPhones and touchscreen-only Android phones certainly prove that users today aren’t as skittish about virtual keyboards as they once were. And besides, many likely don’t even have any experience with a keyboard-equipped smartphone.

Palm also sorely needs a device with a larger screen than the Pre, which is stuck with a tiny (by today’s standards) 3.1-inch screen. WebOS is a gorgeous and touchscreen-friendly operating system — if Palm managed to bring out a 4-inch webOS device, it would certainly be a head turner.

The Mansion’s rumored high-resolution also points to a bigger screen. The Pre has a diminutive 480 pixel by 320 pixel resolution, whereas the tipster says the Mansion runs at 800 by 480 — putting it on par with large-screened Android devices like the Droid X and Nexus One. It’s also close to the iPhone 4′s “Retina Display”, which runs at 960 by 640.

There’s not much else to this rumor yet, though it’s worth mentioning that the Palm Pre’s original codename was “Castle” — which seems to fit the Mansion naming motif. At this point, I’d be more surprised if HP/Palm wasn’t working on a touchscreen-only webOS device. We know that a webOS tablet is on the way, so it makes sense for the company to explore other touchscreen-only options. Plus it now gives HP/Palm a way to entice users who never cared for the Pre’s hardware keyboard.

Image via PreCentral

Getting content noticed is a challenge for everyone making apps. Join us at DiscoveryBeat 2010 and hear secrets from top industry executives about how to break through and profit in the new cross-platform app ecosystem. From metrics to monetization, we’ll take an in depth look at the best discovery strategies and why they’re working. See the full agenda here. The conference takes place on October 18 at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. To register, click here. Hurry though. Tickets are limited, and going fast.

Skillman is no stranger to product design — something which is evident in both the attractive Palm Pre, as well as his resume. He started out as Senior Project Manager at the design firm IDEO, and moved to a Director of New Product Management position at Palm’s then-competitor Handspring. Palm gobbled up Handspring in 2003, and it appears that he left the company shortly after that. He returned to Palm in 2007 as the VP of User Experience, and in 2008 moved up to a VP of Design position. It’s unclear what he’ll be doing next.

In his recent positions Skillman focused on readying Palm’s triumphant return to the smartphone market — the Palm Pre. But while the Pre was indeed a superbly designed product — it was something that managed to wow us when the iPhone reigned supreme, and good Android phones were nowhere to be seen — a series of bad decisions by Palm prevented it from being an actual success. Those include: Choosing Sprint as the premiere network for the Pre; failing to follow up on the hype the Pre gained when it was first announced; and waiting until Apple was ready to go with the iPhone 3G S before actually releasing the Palm Pre.

Palm then followed up the Pre with the lackluster Pixi phone, and the only releases it had to show for 2010 were the slightly revamped Pre Plus and Pixi Plus phones on Verizon.

Skillman joins a talented crew of Palm execs to abandon ship. In April, Palm lost Michael Abbot — its senior vice president of software and services — to Twitter, and offered stay packages to other key employees to keep them from straying. Shortly after that, HP announced it would buy Palm for $1.2 billion.

More recently, WebOS user interface designer Matias Duarte left Palm to work on Android at Google, webOS notification mastermind Rich Gerringer moved to Apple, and former senior VP of Product Development Mike Bell went to Intel.

As TechCrunch points out, a 2009 Forbes profile painted Skillman, Duarte, Bell, and Abbott as the major brains behind the Pre. Now, after HP’s big buyout, they’ve all left the company for greener pastures. Former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein — who was the one to gather the team to build the Pre and webOS — is still sticking with HP as far as we can tell. But with his dream team gone, even Rubinstein must be having second thoughts by now.

At this point I wonder if we’ll see any innovation coming out of HP’s Palm purchase, or if HP will just recycle Palm’s past innovation until it’s no longer relevant.

During an AT&T webinar for mobile developers on Thursday, Palm Developer Advocate Josh Marinacci confirmed that the company is indeed working on new devices, as well as a new version of WebOS, according to PreCentral. “You’re going to find the next year very exciting,” Marinacci said.

That Palm is continuing to develop WebOS isn’t exactly news; it’s clear that HP sees many uses for the mobile OS in netbooks, tablets, and potentially other devices. But the future of Palm’s hardware — which includes the Palm Pre and Pixi, as well as the upgraded “Plus” variations of both phones on Verizon — was far less certain.

When it was first announced, the Pre was hyped up as a potential iPhone killer. But in a turn of fitting irony, Apple squashed much of the Pre’s launch momentum by announcing the iPhone 3G S shortly after the Pre hit stores. While Palm’s hardware floundered, Android hardware found its second wind last fall with the release of the Motorola Droid — which, along with the Nexus One, sparked the massive influx of powerful Android phones we’re seeing this year. Come next year, Palm will also have to contend with an even more powerful iPhone, as well as the fall launch of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7.

The company is also facing brain drain that will make the development of new hardware, as well as a new version of WebOS, even more difficult. In April, Palm lost Michael Abbot — its senior vice president of software and services — to Twitter, and offered stay packages to other key employees to keep them from straying. More recently, WebOS user interface designer Matias Duarte left Palm to work on Android at Google.

Marinacci also spoke briefly about the many delays getting Adobe’s Flash 10.1 mobile version ported to WebOS. In short, Palm simply can’t explain the delay. Perhaps once Android 2.2, which comes with Flash 10.1, finally is made available to more phones, Adobe will be able to concentrate its efforts better on WebOS.

Don’t miss MobileBeat 2010, VentureBeat’s conference on the future of mobile. The theme: “The year of the superphone and who will profit.” Now expanded to two days, MobileBeat 2010 will take place on July 12-13 at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Register now. Tickets are going quickly. For complete conference details, or to apply for the MobileBeat Startup Competition, click here.

But now, it appears there’s some hope: Rich Dellinger, who developed Palm’s “non-intrusive banner notification system” for its new WebOS devices, is returning to his former employer Apple as a senior user interface designer, PreCentral reports. Dellinger started out as a Senior Technical Support Engineer at Apple, but eventually moved on to Web design and user interface design before heading to Palm in 2006.

His other accomplishments at Palm (culled from his LinkedIn profile) include:

Co-developed the Application Framework used by webOS. Created the CSS structure and defined HTML layout and structure conventions in Mojo Application Framework, and for core Palm applications.

Co-invented software and hardware interaction models for a new generation of Linux-based, Palm-branded mobile devices.

Created the interaction and visual design for a suite of media applications for Palm OS 5, combining media browsing, content sharing and video/image capture into a integrated user experience.

Clearly, he’s going to bring more to Apple than just a shiny new notification system (although I hope that’s his current priority).

In April, Palm lost Michael Abbot — its senior vice president of software and services — to Twitter, and offered stay packages to other key employees to keep them from straying. Shortly after that, HP bought Palm for $1.2 billion. More recently, WebOS user interface designer Matias Duarte left Palm to work on Android at Google.

The brain drain isn’t all that surprising given Palm’s lackluster sales since the launch of its Pre smartphone. And in a way, it’s a good thing; now some of the creative minds who made webOS such a breath of fresh air will be able to bring their insight to other mobile platforms.

Don’t miss MobileBeat 2010, VentureBeat’s conference on the future of mobile. The theme: “The year of the superphone and who will profit.” Now expanded to two days, MobileBeat 2010 will take place on July 12-13 at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Register now. Tickets are going quickly. For complete conference details, or to apply for the MobileBeat Startup Competition, click here.

We reported weeks ago that Palm was up for sale, and that HTC and Lenovo were the most likely buyers. Dell was also looking into the company, but passed on making an offer. Huawei, a major Chinese mobile equipment maker, also chose not to bid on Palm.

According to its website, Lenovo at the end of 2009 had $2.4 billion in net cash reserves. Palm could potentially sell for $1.3 billion — given its $1 billion market capitalization, and the recent trend paying an extra 30 percent in tech deals, says Reuters.

Lenovo could be an interesting buyer choice for Palm. As we wrote previously, Lenovo is already familiar with absorbing and continuing another company’s brand. It purchased the ThinkPad brand from IBM and has (for the most part) kept up the brand’s previous reputation of reliability, while also modernizing it. It also paid $200 million in January to purchase Lenovo Mobile Communication Technology — a mobile unit that it originally sold in 2008.

Lenovo wouldn’t have moved forward with its mobile unit if it didn’t have mobile ambitions, and Palm’s WebOS software would be a worthy addition to Lenovo’s own hardware. Lenovo recently said that it expects its mobile products to be worth 10 to 20 percent of its revenue in five years. A Palm purchase would certainly give it a jump start towards that goal.

The news follows dire quarterly earning reports in March that dropped Palm’s stock down to $3.75 — its lowest point in the past year, after hitting a $17.75 peak in September. Palm’s stock jumped 32 percent last week with rumors that computer-maker Lenovo and cellphone manufacturer HTC were eying the company for purchase. Now we’ve learned that those rumors are true, and that Lenovo and HTC may make offers soon.

Palm is working with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Qatalyst Partners to find a buyer. Dell has apparently also looked into the company, but passed on making an offer.

When Palm announced the Pre at CES 2009, there was genuine excitement surrounding the product because it was the first recent smartphone to actually best the iPhone in many ways — due in large part to Palm’s revolutionary WebOS software. But that same hardware doesn’t shine as brightly now when compared to recent Android phones like the Motorola Droid or Nexus One, or even the iPhone 3GS. Palm’s recent Plus upgrades to the phones for Verizon have sold poorly, and now the carrier is offering the smartphones at a major discount.

Both Lenovo and HTC are interesting choices for buyers. Lenovo is already familiar with absorbing and continuing another company’s brand. It purchased the ThinkPad brand from IBM and has (for the most part) kept up the brand’s previous reputation of reliability, while also modernizing it. It also paid $200 million in January to purchase Lenovo Mobile Communication Technology Ltd. — a mobile unit that it originally sold in 2008.

HTC could use WebOS with its own well-regarded hardware — although I’m sure such a purchase would be thorny for HTC, since it’s also the go-to handset maker for Google’s Android operating system. The Nexus One, MyTouch 3G, and the first Android phone, the G1, were all built by HTC.

We’ve also covered why Blackberry-maker Research in Motion is an ideal choice for gobbling up Palm. Much like HTC, RIM could benefit greatly from WebOS — and it’s likely much more desperate for a modern mobile operating system than HTC. RIM has ruled the smartphone realm for the longest time, but it’s done a poor job of competing with the latest generation of smartphones with its inability to modernize its OS. While it would certainly be confusing for RIM to juggle both the Palm and BlackBerry brands, it wouldn’t be that difficult for RIM to eventually outfit WebOS with the email and enterprise features its customers adore.

Palm currently has a market value of $870.8 million, and given its rate of poor sales so far, it certainly won’t be able to hold out for much longer. Short of a miracle hardware release (not likely, and it already had that shot with the Pre), Palm’s only choice now is to be bought out.

The only question is, who is brave enough to resuscitate the company?

Zumodrive offers users the ability to store several forms of content, including music, video and photos, to a cloud-based storage platform that can be accessed from multiple devices. The service is valuable as many devices — both PCs and mobile, alike — have limited storage capabilities. Its a good option for people worried about content size and losing data. ZumoDrive automatically provides backup to specifically selected folders so that consumers can access their content both online and offline.

Recently, the company made several big announcements, including that Hewlett-Packard agreed to have ZumoDrive power an “HP CloudDrive” service installed on the computer maker’s new line of netbooks. It also closed a new round of funding for $1.5 million from investors Ram Shriram, plus original investors Tandem Entrepreneurs and VeriFone CEO Douglas Bergeron.

The Burlingame, Calif.-based company, founded in 2007, offers several tiers of the ZumoDrive application. The application is available for Mac OS X, PC, Linux, iPhone, Android and Palm Pre platforms.

The update includes the usual bug fixes and performance improvements, but it also brings two major new features to Palm’s platform — video recording, and Adobe Flash support. Palm originally announced the video recording feature at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, and said that it would feature similar editing and sharing options as the iPhone. Flash is only available for the Pre (due to its faster processor), and users still need to wait for the Flash plug-in to hit the Palm application catalog. Palm says it will be available shortly.

That it has taken so long for Palm’s smartphones to receive video recording — Android devices received it in early 2009, the iPhone got it with the 3GS in June ’09 –  likely contributed to Palm’s lackluster sales report.

It’s not entirely certain if this means that Verizon subscribers with the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus will receive the update at the same time — but we will update once we’ve learned more.

Since the original Sprint message board posting has disappeared, find the full details below:

Palm Pre and Pixi WebOS 1.4 Software Update

On 2/26, Friday evening, Pre and Pixi device users will receive an Over the Air (OTA) notification to download the new 1.4 webOS software release.

This release includes both fixes and feature updates (listed below).

Fixes:

• Time Zone bug fixed
• Network time sync bug fixed to reflect accurate Network time
• Bluetooth car-kit transition to device corrected
• No EV icon bug fixed (random)
• Random browser formatting bugs fixed
• Fixed bug that incorrectly displayed Sprint when actually was Digital Roaming
• Missing Contact issue specifically with swap down to 1.2.9.1 or less

Feature Updates

• Phonebook Transfer (import & export)
• Adds Video Capture capability & edit
• Calendar Enhancements
• Messaging Enhancements
• Improved Performance (Phone & CAL)
• Email Enhancements
• Notification Enhancements
• Adds Adobe Flash 10.0 (Pre Only)
• NOTE: The 1.4 software adds the ability to use the Flash 10.0 Adobe plug-in which will be available shortly from the Palm Appl Catalogue.

If that’s true, it raises significant questions about the balance of power in the sexy smart phone industry. Palm may soon draw scrutiny from bigger players. Already, analyst Ashok Kumar has stirred the market, suggesting Dell should buy it (Dell’s stock price even dropped on the recommendation).

So far, the iPhone has had a vice-like grip on developers, because it’s been so fun to develop on. Developers can build awesome looking applications, with few barriers. With developers flocking to it, the iPhone is brimming with applications — all of which has driven sales of more than 40 million iPhones and iPod Touches.

But during a dinner conversation organized by VentureBeat last night at Blue Run Ventures in Menlo Park, Calif., developer Christian Sepulveda of Pivotal Labs said that has changed. Sepulveda (pictured below), whose group builds applications for companies wanting mobile offerings, said he’s advising his clients — Twitter, BestBuy and Salesforce among them — to start on the Pre. The phone’s operating system, called WebOS, offers the most compelling place to build and test a prototype, for both cost and technology reasons, he said.

Pivotal does not have a business relationship with Palm, he told us last night. So Sepulveda’s comments appear to be objective. Pivotal is also well regarded. It was the firm that Twitter called in to help it manage its Web offering, after high traffic growth kept crashing Twitter’s site.

Clearly, the Palm Pre is so new on the market, and so few phones have been sold, that developers would be crazy if they developed for WebOS and didn’t try to get distribution on other phones, such as the iPhone. But because WebOS is the easiest platform to build, test, review and iterate on, most developers can then port their work over to other phones where more attention can be put into making it work for that particular device, he said.

Of course, with 50,000 apps built on the iPhone in little more than a year, it’s clear that the Apple iPhone platform is compelling for developers. But for a while, Apple had the developer world to itself. Many developers fell in love with the slick iPhone user interface and accompanying applications, because it was their first love. But they may be overlooking the time it’s taking them to create applications. They’re taking all night to work in Objective C, the Apple iPhone framework, when they should really only need a half-hour to do the same on WebOS, Sepulveda said. A very high number of iPhone applications then crash at launch, or stall while running, meaning the cost of development on the iPhone is not well understood. For efficiency reasons alone, the WebOS makes sense. RIM, the other popular phone platform, has multiple phones, each with its own flavor. Google’s Android, meanwhile, has been gunning for the role that Sepulevda says Palm’s WebOs has taken. In April, Android co-founder Rich Miner argued Android was the best paltform to build and iterate on because of its more open operating platform.

However, Sepulveda says WebOS is much easier for most up-and-coming developers than Android because its core elements — Javascript, HTML and CSS — are better understood by them. Android is based on Java, which is a language known by lots of developers, but it’s also a beast to grasp. You can have a developer working on web work in Java, another working on middleware in Java, and another on the desktop in Java, but none of them have the knowledge to be effective in each of the other areas. Android has a clear vision, but its framework is still a challenge for most developers to get their head around. It’s easier than working on the iPhone or for RIM’s Blackberry platform, but Pivotal is finding that most of its developers ramped up much more easily on Palm’s WebOS. Another reason is that WebOS comes bundled with things like Prototype, a very popular javascript library that many developers already know. For agile, quick turnaround developers, WebOS is turning out to be a no-brainer.

Finally, the average WebOS application codebase tends to be around 75 percent contained in the application itself, with only 25 percent or so dependent on the framework needed for the particular phone. That makes the codebase easy to transfer to other platforms, where less work needs to be done to code the application for other phones. Clearly, that percentage varies widely, depending on the specific app. For example, if you want to build a mobile application that helps you get around the London Tube system, you’ll want that app to be able to run almost entirely on the device itself, with almost no reliance on the Web at all — because you’ll be underground, where accessing the Web is difficult. So much work is required to tailor the app to specific phones, you’d want to start building that app on the phone with the widest distribution.

We held last night’s dinner to brainstorm our MobileBeat 2009 mobile event agenda. Several of the other attendees, who included mobile investors, executives, and consultants, challenged Sepulveda on his argument. The massive distribution of the iPhone, and easy way to buy apps, make it a much better place for developers to start if they want to make money right away, they said. Famed game developer Trip Hawkins said recently he can sell more copies of a game on an iPhone than he can with a 100 other handsets. That’s because the iPhone App store has trained iPhone users to buy things easily — through their iTunes account. Sepulveda acknowledged this, and said that a developer’s strategy on what platform to choose varies depending on specific goals. However, he then listed another reason why a developer should work with the Pre: The iPhone has 50,000 applications, and it’s hard for any one of them to get attention. With Palm’s Pre, there are only 25 or so applications — it’s a great time to go early with WebOS and get lots of exposure.

In conclusion, Palm’s platform looks really cool. But the burden is on Palm to prove to a majority of developers that they’ll get a payback if they shoot for Palm first, since clearly they’ll be giving up lots by getting to the iPhone or others later.

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