Palm made an announcement earlier this week which should only have been startling if you have paid absolutely no attention to the world of mobile devices for the entire year of 2009.  Until now, as many of you know, Palm has been a dual Operating System company.  You could buy Palm branded devices running either the outdated PalmOS (like the popular and inexpensive Treo) or Windows Mobile (like the even more popular Treo line).

Earlier this year, Palm released the much heralded upgrade to its PalmOS, the WebOS Operating system with the Palm Pre.  This month saw the release of Palm’s second WebOS based device, the Pixi (both are available on the Sprint network). 

With two devices and a moderately to highly successful (depending on whom you ask) Operating System on its hands, Palm has taken the not terribly shocking step of placing all of its eggs into the WebOS basket.  In a conference call earlier this week, Palm executives had this to say:

Due to importance of WebOS to our overall strategy, we’ve made the decision to dedicate all future development resources to the evolution of WebOS. Which means that going forward, our roadmap will include only Palm WebOS-based devices.

This is going to come as disappointing news to a lot of Treo users, especially the Treo Pro, which was an extremely popular Windows Mobile device.   Only time will tell, however, whether this will prove to be a company-saving strategy, or the final straw on a badly broken back. 

[via mypre.com]