Mojo SDK available to all
After a successful early access program, Palm's Mojo Software Development Kit is available to all interested app developers. The SDK can be downloaded from a new developer portal — Palm webOSdev — at developer.palm.com. Any interested developer …
Context & Ripple Effects
This closes a loop Palm opened well before webOS shipped: the company's 2007 message to customers, partners and developers was an explicit attempt to rebuild developer confidence after years of platform drift, and the April 2009 reporting that early-access developers felt webOS lived up to its hype gave the program credibility. General availability of the Mojo SDK through the new webOSdev portal at developer.palm.com converts that gated optimism into an open door.
The significance is timing: Palm is trying to seed its App Catalog while the webOS device base is still small, betting that low-friction access to tools will attract developers ahead of demand rather than after it.
First-order effects
- Any interested developer can now download the Mojo SDK directly rather than waiting on an early-access invitation, shifting Palm's pipeline from a curated cohort to self-serve onboarding.
- Palm gains a measurable funnel — portal registrations and submitted apps — that tells it within weeks whether the enthusiasm early developers voiced in April generalizes.
Second-order effects
- Developers allocating limited porting resources across mobile platforms gain a third target alongside the established storefronts, and each app built on Mojo raises the catalog-depth gap Palm needs to close against larger rivals.
- Competing platforms face pressure on how quickly they grant tooling and store access, since Palm is making 'any interested developer' the baseline expectation.
Third-order effects
- If general SDK availability becomes table stakes, smartphone competition consolidates around ecosystem openness and catalog breadth rather than hardware specs alone — the axis Palm's 2007 outreach already signaled it intended to fight on.
The trend: Smartphone platforms are racing to convert developer goodwill into catalog depth by removing gatekeeping from their SDKs, with webOS's open door one data point in that shift.