I remember seeing the Palm Pre at CES in 2009 and being impressed. The smartphone became the buzz among my techno peers -- Palm seemed to rise out of the doldrums and take center stage. But the company was unable to capitalize on that early momentum. It took half a year before the Pre hit store shelves and by then the luster had faded. That marked the decline of Palm, which eventually became an acquisition as HP swooped in to collect assets. Insult followed injury when HP shelved the Pre's operating system, webOS. The company announced it would continue to develop webOS with the goal of making it an open-source operating system.![]()
