—Pre for O2?: O2 has beaten rivals Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) and Orange to win the deal to exclusively carry the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre, unnamed sources told the Guardian.co.uk. It’s good news for O2, which currently stocks the iPhone exclusively, but will reportedly see that deal phased out as Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) looks to open up distribution of the cellphone to other carriers. More at mocoNews.net... —EU mobile broadband stats: New research shows that the mobile broadband market in Western Europe—comprising of 3G dongles, cards and internal celluar modems, reached 10.5 million units in 2008, compared to 4.7 million in 2007. Via Telecompaper.com. —Nokia’s Ovi Store: Finnish mobile giant Nokia (NYSE: NOK) today finally unveiled its Ovi app store as a mobile browser-based client via store.ovi.com or as a downloadable app. Users in eight countries including the UK will be able to add the cost of apps to their mobile bills. There are more than 50 million Nokia handsets across the world, but the company has a long way to go to compete with Apple’s iPhone app store, which reached one billion downloads in less than a year. Full story at our sister site Moconews.net —Connect2Media: The Manchester-based mobile and TV games developer and distributor has launched its first game on Apple’s iPhone app store: users can download Go! Go! Rescue Squad from today, priced £2.99. Versions for Wii Ware, Xbox Live Arcade, Android and Windows Live are due for later this year.

—Pre for O2?: O2 has beaten rivals Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) and Orange to win the deal to exclusively carry the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre, unnamed sources told the Guardian.co.uk. It’s good news for O2, which currently stocks the iPhone exclusively, but will reportedly see that deal phased out as Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) looks to open up distribution of the cellphone to other carriers. More at mocoNews.net... The iPhone has been particularly good to O2, where it has helped attract valuable contract customers and reduce churn, no small thing in one of Europe’s most competitive mobile markets. It’s unknown at this point whether the deal with O2, which is owned by Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica (NYSE: TEF), will extend to the group’s other units. Spanish press reports in March said Telefonica had won the Pre deal to exclusively distribute the device in the UK, Spain and Latin America. —EU mobile broadband stats: New research shows that the mobile broadband market in Western Europe—comprising of 3G dongles, cards and internal celluar modems, reached 10.5 million units in 2008, compared to 4.7 million in 2007. Via Telecompaper.com. —Nokia’s Ovi Store: Finnish mobile giant Nokia (NYSE: NOK) today finally unveiled its Ovi app store as a mobile browser-based client via store.ovi.com or as a downloadable app. Users in eight countries including the UK will be able to add the cost of apps to their mobile bills. There are more than 50 million Nokia handsets across the world, but the company has a long way to go to compete with Apple’s iPhone app store, which reached one billion downloads in less than a year. Full story at our sister site Moconews.net —Connect2Media: The Manchester-based mobile and TV games developer and distributor has launched its first game on Apple’s iPhone app store: users can download Go! Go! Rescue Squad from today, priced £2.99. Versions for Wii Ware, Xbox Live Arcade, Android and Windows Live are due for later this year.

Sprint’s message following the release of its first-quarter financial results today was this: Most of the company’s major initiatives are in place—now it has to wait for the impact to show up in the second half of the year. Sprint’s CEO Dan Hesse, who took on the task of turning around the company two years ago, said during the company’s conference call: “We recognize there’s a lag between improvements and when the market recognizes these improvements. We have strengthened the company finally. We have more cash and less debt...We are far from satisfied with post-paid subscribers, but we are hopeful that the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre and other initiatives we have planned will help over the year. The hard work is not over, but we have enough cash to give us time to figure things out.” After the call, I followed up with Hesse to discuss about what the company has left to do; rumors about outsourcing the company’s network; the role of app stores; the company’s new $50 pre-paid offering, which struggled under the weight of unexpected popularity; and about the upcoming Palm Pre, which they confirmed will launch by the end of June. Excerpts after the jump… Q: In previous conference calls, you were always very honest about how much work you still had left to do. Today, you said “we have strengthened the company finally.” Is that a sign that you have turned a corner? How much do you have left to do? Hesse: It’s all relative given the economic climate. We still have a lot of areas for improvement, but I feel good about the fact that we are generating a lot of free cash flow. We have enough cash to get us into 2012, and in today’s environment that’s a big plus. A year ago, even six months ago, it wasn’t like that given some of the debt maturities—our cash position has improved. What gives us the most optimism is what we have been working on from day one is where we are improving [like generating cash flow and improving customer service]...Generating cash flow gives you lots of time to turn the company around. We have a lot of work left, but what we have been working on has been paying off. We’ve been making progress on a turnaround. Q: One of the ways you could continue to make progress is by outsourcing parts of your network to a company, like Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC). Can you comment on the latest rumors today, saying you are close to a deal with them? Hesse: No. We have said publicly, on a number of occasions, that we are looking at all possible alternatives. Everything is on the table, including outsourcing. There’s nothing new there. We’ve been every open that we are open to exploring alternatives, like outsourcing parts of our network management. No decisions have been made, so we can’t comment on any speculation. Q: In my opinion, you have been one of the more aggressive companies at building out a wholesale business with devices like the Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Kindle. Are you worried about becoming a dumb pipe, like other carriers? Hesse: We think the model of the future is to bring as many devices as possible on to our network. If you take a look at the growth possibilities, you have post-aid, which is dominated by cellphones and smartphones, PDAs and air cards, and then you have two areas of growth: prepaid and wholesale. That’s our Boost Unlimited offer and wholesale, which is everything from traditional phones, like Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM), to all sorts of embedded devices, and machine to machine. You can look at the new Ford truck, which is embedded with Sprint (NYSE: S). We don’t consider it being a dumb network if people get there newspaper or book immediately by downloading it over our network, like the Amazon Kindle. We see that as a terrific opportunity. Q: Carriers are making a lot of money today selling ringtones and other content. Do you see a model forming where the carrier plays less of a role, and there’s someone like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) that manages the App Store and keeps the revenues? Hesse: Those are the kinds of things we are looking at. There’s going to be a proliferation of applications, and we have a very open approach. We have 250 devices that don’t carry the Sprint name. We’ve had an open development platform for some time that uses standard tools like, Java, which makes it easy for a web application developer to port over to a Sprint mobile device. We want to encourage as much app development as possible, and customers are going to be looking for an increasing number of applications. As you know, our 4G strategy includes owning 51 percent of Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR). They also have very much of an open model. One of the significant investors is Intel (NSDQ: INTC), which wants chips in as many devices as possible. Q: What about things like the BlackBerry App World? Is that a threat because it rolled out directly to customers and doesn’t share revenues with the carrier? Hesse: I think the market is going to evolve. We don’t view changes to the market as threatening, but opportunities. We ask, how can we create a win-win here? The customer is going to do what they want to do. Q:What about Sprint’s exclusive content agreements with Nascar and the NFL? Do you see Sprint continuing partnerships like that? Hesse: I think that’s going to be very, very important. You’ll still have exclusive content that we only provide to our customers. You’ve named two of our most important, NFL Mobile Live, and Nascar Mobile Live. Subscribers can get access to all sorts of content they can’t get anywhere else. And, about a year ago, in March 2008, we opened up full HTML browsing to all of our CDMA phones. That’s unique in the industry. In the ideal world, we have exclusive content that’s optimized around the mobile experience. For instance, with Nascar, you can listen live to any race, any pit crew that you want. You can listen to the chatter if you are in Seattle, and the race is in Daytona. We at Sprint plan to bring customers special content for them, but we don’t want to limit them from getting other content. Q: You rolled out Simply Everything a year ago. On the earnings call, you called it the MVP for subscriber acquisition, subscriber retention and average revenue per user (ARPU). Do people use a tremendous amount of data? Hesse: What they love about it is the simplicity. While at AT&T (NYSE: T) Wireless, we rolled out the Digital One Rate plan 11 years ago (which gave people nationwide calling for one rate). Customers just want to use the device for all it’s capable of doing, including NFL Mobile Live, or Nascar. They can go to Sprint TV and they can go to the web. These devices are Swiss Army knives. We don’t want to limit them. If they like to Twitter, they can do it to their heart’s content. Q: The adoption of the Boost Unlimited plan, which offers unlimited voice, text, push-to-talk and web, was unexpectedly high, and caused text message delays. You said today on the call that those issues have been fixed. What happened? Hesse: The demand for Boost Unlimited significantly exceeded our forecast. It was much more successful than we thought it would be. The iDEN network itself ran perfectly. There was plenty of additional voice capacity, but the messaging platform was overloaded. We had under-forecast demand. We think those problems, those delays of text messages, are behind us, and it’s operating more at normal levels. Q: How did demand exceed capacity. Are typical iDEN users not heavy texters? Hesse: They were texters, and they continue to be, but we are talking big subscriber numbers, and that’s why you are seeing the street react. It’s 50 bucks, there’s no hidden fees. You get the great iDEN network that covers the entire country, unlike its competitors that don’t have the coverage. Q: You are obviously pegging a lot of the company’s success on the upcoming Palm Pre roll-out. Have you said how long you have the exclusive for? Hesse: No.

Sprint’s message following the release of its first-quarter financial results today was this: Most of the company’s major initiatives are in place—now it has to wait for the impact to show up in the second half of the year. Sprint’s CEO Dan Hesse, who took on the task of turning around the company two years ago, said during the company’s conference call: “We recognize there’s a lag between improvements and when the market recognizes these improvements. We have strengthened the company finally. We have more cash and less debt...We are far from satisfied with post-paid subscribers, but we are hopeful that the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre and other initiatives we have planned will help over the year. The hard work is not over, but we have enough cash to give us time to figure things out.” After the call, I followed up with Hesse to discuss about what the company has left to do; rumors about outsourcing the company’s network; the role of app stores; the company’s new $50 pre-paid offering, which struggled under the weight of unexpected popularity; and about the upcoming Palm Pre, which they confirmed will launch by the end of June. Excerpts after the jump… Q: In previous conference calls, you were always very honest about how much work you still had left to do. Today, you said “we have strengthened the company finally.” Is that a sign that you have turned a corner? How much do you have left to do? Hesse: It’s all relative given the economic climate. We still have a lot of areas for improvement, but I feel good about the fact that we are generating a lot of free cash flow. We have enough cash to get us into 2012, and in today’s environment that’s a big plus. A year ago, even six months ago, it wasn’t like that given some of the debt maturities—our cash position has improved. What gives us the most optimism is what we have been working on from day one is where we are improving [like generating cash flow and improving customer service]...Generating cash flow gives you lots of time to turn the company around. We have a lot of work left, but what we have been working on has been paying off. We’ve been making progress on a turnaround. Q: One of the ways you could continue to make progress is by outsourcing parts of your network to a company, like Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC). Can you comment on the latest rumors today, saying you are close to a deal with them? Hesse: No. We have said publicly, on a number of occasions, that we are looking at all possible alternatives. Everything is on the table, including outsourcing. There’s nothing new there. We’ve been every open that we are open to exploring alternatives, like outsourcing parts of our network management. No decisions have been made, so we can’t comment on any speculation. Q: In my opinion, you have been one of the more aggressive companies at building out a wholesale business with devices like the Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Kindle. Are you worried about becoming a dumb pipe, like other carriers? Hesse: We think the model of the future is to bring as many devices as possible on to our network. If you take a look at the growth possibilities, you have post-aid, which is dominated by cellphones and smartphones, PDAs and air cards, and then you have two areas of growth: prepaid and wholesale. That’s our Boost Unlimited offer and wholesale, which is everything from traditional phones, like Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM), to all sorts of embedded devices, and machine to machine. You can look at the new Ford truck, which is embedded with Sprint (NYSE: S). We don’t consider it being a dumb network if people get there newspaper or book immediately by downloading it over our network, like the Amazon Kindle. We see that as a terrific opportunity. Q: Carriers are making a lot of money today selling ringtones and other content. Do you see a model forming where the carrier plays less of a role, and there’s someone like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) that manages the App Store and keeps the revenues? Hesse: Those are the kinds of things we are looking at. There’s going to be a proliferation of applications, and we have a very open approach. We have 250 devices that don’t carry the Sprint name. We’ve had an open development platform for some time that uses standard tools like, Java, which makes it easy for a web application developer to port over to a Sprint mobile device. We want to encourage as much app development as possible, and customers are going to be looking for an increasing number of applications. As you know, our 4G strategy includes owning 51 percent of Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR). They also have very much of an open model. One of the significant investors is Intel (NSDQ: INTC), which wants chips in as many devices as possible. Q: What about things like the BlackBerry App World? Is that a threat because it rolled out directly to customers and doesn’t share revenues with the carrier? Hesse: I think the market is going to evolve. We don’t view changes to the market as threatening, but opportunities. We ask, how can we create a win-win here? The customer is going to do what they want to do. Q:What about Sprint’s exclusive content agreements with Nascar and the NFL? Do you see Sprint continuing partnerships like that? Hesse: I think that’s going to be very, very important. You’ll still have exclusive content that we only provide to our customers. You’ve named two of our most important, NFL Mobile Live, and Nascar Mobile Live. Subscribers can get access to all sorts of content they can’t get anywhere else. And, about a year ago, in March 2008, we opened up full HTML browsing to all of our CDMA phones. That’s unique in the industry. In the ideal world, we have exclusive content that’s optimized around the mobile experience. For instance, with Nascar, you can listen live to any race, any pit crew that you want. You can listen to the chatter if you are in Seattle, and the race is in Daytona. We at Sprint plan to bring customers special content for them, but we don’t want to limit them from getting other content. Q: You rolled out Simply Everything a year ago. On the earnings call, you called it the MVP for subscriber acquisition, subscriber retention and average revenue per user (ARPU). Do people use a tremendous amount of data? Hesse: What they love about it is the simplicity. While at AT&T (NYSE: T) Wireless, we rolled out the Digital One Rate plan 11 years ago (which gave people nationwide calling for one rate). Customers just want to use the device for all it’s capable of doing, including NFL Mobile Live, or Nascar. They can go to Sprint TV and they can go to the web. These devices are Swiss Army knives. We don’t want to limit them. If they like to Twitter, they can do it to their heart’s content. Q: The adoption of the Boost Unlimited plan, which offers unlimited voice, text, push-to-talk and web, was unexpectedly high, and caused text message delays. You said today on the call that those issues have been fixed. What happened? Hesse: The demand for Boost Unlimited significantly exceeded our forecast. It was much more successful than we thought it would be. The iDEN network itself ran perfectly. There was plenty of additional voice capacity, but the messaging platform was overloaded. We had under-forecast demand. We think those problems, those delays of text messages, are behind us, and it’s operating more at normal levels. Q: How did demand exceed capacity. Are typical iDEN users not heavy texters? Hesse: They were texters, and they continue to be, but we are talking big subscriber numbers, and that’s why you are seeing the street react. It’s 50 bucks, there’s no hidden fees. You get the great iDEN network that covers the entire country, unlike its competitors that don’t have the coverage. Q: You are obviously pegging a lot of the company’s success on the upcoming Palm Pre roll-out. Have you said how long you have the exclusive for? Hesse: No.

Sprint’s message following the release of its first-quarter financial results today was this: Most of the company’s major initiatives are in place—now it has to wait for the impact to show up in the second half of the year. Sprint’s CEO Dan Hesse, who took on the task of turning around the company two years ago, said during the company’s conference call: “We recognize there’s a lag between improvements and when the market recognizes these improvements. We have strengthened the company finally. We have more cash and less debt...We are far from satisfied with post-paid subscribers, but we are hopeful that the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre and other initiatives we have planned will help over the year. The hard work is not over, but we have enough cash to give us time to figure things out.” After the call, I followed up with Hesse to discuss about what the company has left to do; rumors about outsourcing the company’s network; the role of app stores; the company’s new $50 pre-paid offering, which struggled under the weight of unexpected popularity; and about the upcoming Palm Pre, which they confirmed will launch by the end of June. Q: In previous conference calls, you were always very honest about how much work you still had left to do. Today, you said “we have strengthened the company finally.” Is that a sign that you have turned a corner? How much do you have left to do? Hesse: It’s all relative given the economic climate. We still have a lot of areas for improvement, but I feel good about the fact that we are generating a lot of free cash flow. We have enough cash to get us into 2012, and in today’s environment that’s a big plus. A year ago, even six months ago, it wasn’t like that given some of the debt maturities—our cash position has improved. What gives us the most optimism is what we have been working on from day one is where we are improving [like generating cash flow and improving customer service]...Generating cash flow gives you lots of time to turn the company around. We have a lot of work left, but what we have been working on has been paying off. We’ve been making progress on a turnaround. More excerpts after the jump… Q: One of the ways you could continue to make progress is by outsourcing parts of your network to a company, like Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC). Can you comment on the latest rumors today, saying you are close to a deal with them? Hesse: No. We have said publicly, on a number of occasions, that we are looking at all possible alternatives. Everything is on the table, including outsourcing. There’s nothing new there. We’ve been every open that we are open to exploring alternatives, like outsourcing parts of our network management. No decisions have been made, so we can’t comment on any speculation. Q: In my opinion, you have been one of the more aggressive companies at building out a wholesale business with devices like the Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Kindle. Are you worried about becoming a dumb pipe, like other carriers? Hesse: We think the model of the future is to bring as many devices as possible on to our network. If you take a look at the growth possibilities, you have post-aid, which is dominated by cellphones and smartphones, PDAs and air cards, and then you have two areas of growth: prepaid and wholesale. That’s our Boost Unlimited offer and wholesale, which is everything from traditional phones, like Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM), to all sorts of embedded devices, and machine to machine. You can look at the new Ford truck, which is embedded with Sprint (NYSE: S). We don’t consider it being a dumb network if people get there newspaper or book immediately by downloading it over our network, like the Amazon Kindle. We see that as a terrific opportunity. Q: Carriers are making a lot of money today selling ringtones and other content. Do you see a model forming where the carrier plays less of a role, and there’s someone like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) that manages the App Store and keeps the revenues? Hesse: Those are the kinds of things we are looking at. There’s going to be a proliferation of applications, and we have a very open approach. We have 250 devices that don’t carry the Sprint name. We’ve had an open development platform for some time that uses standard tools like, Java, which makes it easy for a web application developer to port over to a Sprint mobile device. We want to encourage as much app development as possible, and customers are going to be looking for an increasing number of applications. As you know, our 4G strategy includes owning 51 percent of Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR). They also have very much of an open model. One of the significant investors is Intel (NSDQ: INTC), which wants chips in as many devices as possible. Q: What about things like the BlackBerry App World? Is that a threat because it rolled out directly to customers and doesn’t share revenues with the carrier? Hesse: I think the market is going to evolve. We don’t view changes to the market as threatening, but opportunities. We ask, how can we create a win-win here? The customer is going to do what they want to do. Q:What about Sprint’s exclusive content agreements with Nascar and the NFL? Do you see Sprint continuing partnerships like that? Hesse: I think that’s going to be very, very important. You’ll still have exclusive content that we only provide to our customers. You’ve named two of our most important, NFL Mobile Live, and Nascar Mobile Live. Subscribers can get access to all sorts of content they can’t get anywhere else. And, about a year ago, in March 2008, we opened up full HTML browsing to all of our CDMA phones. That’s unique in the industry. In the ideal world, we have exclusive content that’s optimized around the mobile experience. For instance, with Nascar, you can listen live to any race, any pit crew that you want. You can listen to the chatter if you are in Seattle, and the race is in Daytona. We at Sprint plan to bring customers special content for them, but we don’t want to limit them from getting other content. Q: You rolled out Simply Everything a year ago. On the earnings call, you called it the MVP for subscriber acquisition, subscriber retention and average revenue per user (ARPU). Do people use a tremendous amount of data? Hesse: What they love about it is the simplicity. While at AT&T (NYSE: T) Wireless, we rolled out the Digital One Rate plan 11 years ago (which gave people nationwide calling for one rate). Customers just want to use the device for all it’s capable of doing, including NFL Mobile Live, or Nascar. They can go to Sprint TV and they can go to the web. These devices are Swiss Army knives. We don’t want to limit them. If they like to Twitter, they can do it to their heart’s content. Q: The adoption of the Boost Unlimited plan, which offers unlimited voice, text, push-to-talk and web, was unexpectedly high, and caused text message delays. You said today on the call that those issues have been fixed. What happened? Hesse: The demand for Boost Unlimited significantly exceeded our forecast. It was much more successful than we thought it would be. The iDEN network itself ran perfectly. There was plenty of additional voice capacity, but the messaging platform was overloaded. We had under-forecast demand. We think those problems, those delays of text messages, are behind us, and it’s operating more at normal levels. Q: How did demand exceed capacity. Are typical iDEN users not heavy texters? Hesse: They were texters, and they continue to be, but we are talking big subscriber numbers, and that’s why you are seeing the street react. It’s 50 bucks, there’s no hidden fees. You get the great iDEN network that covers the entire country, unlike its competitors that don’t have the coverage. Q: You are obviously pegging a lot of the company’s success on the upcoming Palm Pre roll-out. Have you said how long you have the exclusive for? Hesse: No.

US mobile users are increasingly getting into text messaging, Internet browsing, and social networks as they continue to shift to more capable devices. Additionally, Apple's and Google's share of the smartphone market is inching up while other leadersâ??namely RIMâ??are slowly being chipped away, at least according to the latest data...

US mobile users are increasingly getting into text messaging, Internet browsing, and social networks as they continue to shift to more capable devices. Additionally, Apple's and Google's share of the smartphone market is inching up while other leadersâ??namely RIMâ??are slowly being chipped away, at least according to the latest data...

Apple and Google's mobile platforms are gaining market-share on rivals, while Microsoft and Palm are continuing to slip.

See the rest of the story here.

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comScore has released a report on the state of the US mobile market from September to December 2009, and it shows that the recently established trends of Android and iPhone growth don't show signs of ceasing. In December 2009 RIM was still the leading mobile smartphone...

Google, Apple gain smartphone share at expense of Palm, RIM and Microsoft (comScore) TALF losses from CMBS could exceed $500m for US Treasury in the worst case scenario (GAO via FT Alphaville) Assets of the largest 1,000 banks in the world grew by 6.8% in FY 2008/2009 to a record $96.4 trillion (IFSL) Hulu Surpasses 1 Billion Monthly [...]

The change in the mobile phone market caused by the introduction of Apple's iPhone has slightly cut the profits for the handset industry overall, but has most severely affected Nokia and Sony Ericsson, while boosting Research in Motion, according to data released today from Deutsche Bank.

Palm, Inc. (PALM: sentiment, chart, options) found itself in the crosshairs of put players on Thursday, Feb...(Read More)

Advanced Micro (AMD, news: 7.61 +2.01%) upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at JMP Securities… Airgas (ARG, news: 43.14 +2.08%) upgraded to Buy from Hold at Deutsche Bank… AMB Property (AMB, news: 24.44 +1.83%) upgraded to Neutral from Sell, $24 target, at UBS… Arch Coal (ACI, news: 20.87 -0.95%) downgraded to Market Perform, $22 target, at BMO Capital… Arrow [...]

Popular location-based social network Brightkite has simultaneously released mobile apps for some Nokia as well as Palm smartphones. The release of the apps follows earlier launches of Android, BlackBerry and iPhone applications.

Apple may not see a need to add support for Adobe Systems' Flash multimedia software to a smartphone, but other handset makers do and plan to release software updates soon.

Palm and Motorola are among the vendors betting users want access to a broader range of Web content from their phones. Both companies plan to add Flash support to their smartphones soon, executives said at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

Palm opened up its WebOS developer program to the public on Thursday, saying it expects to see a flood of new applications developed for the mobile OS.

"We look forward to some incredible growth in our application catalog this year," said Katie Mitic, Palm's senior vice president of product marketing, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Schaeffer's analyst Morgan Searcy takes a look at news on the Street before the market open

Schaeffer's analyst Morgan Searcy takes a look at news on the Street before the market open

Palm's Project Ares, a browser-based development toolset for Palm webOS applications, has moved to a public beta stage, a Palm representative said on Thursday afternoon.

Applications can be developed for Palm's Pre and Pixi devices. Ares is "the first complete set of integrated mobile development tools hosted entirely in the browser that makes it even easier and faster to create Palm webOS apps," a Palm representative said in an email.