I watched the Palm Pre CES announcement. WOW.

http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/pre/palm-pre-ces.html

I’m blown away. I read the blog posts, but even they did not prepare me for the complete package. Watch that video ASAP.

I still think Apple could win this war, but Palm is definitely showing up for the fight. Before the Palm Pre announcement I would have ranked the smartphone operating systems as Apple, RIM, Nokia, Microsoft. Now I think it’s Apple, Palm (Web OS), RIM, Nokia, Microsoft. And if everything shown in that video pans out and Apple doesn’t repsond in a major way, the ranking will move to Palm (Web OS), Apple, RIM, Nokia, Microsoft.

It makes you think. Are the other players sitting on some next gen tech, too? Will we see something earth shattering from Microsoft soon? One thing is for sure. This year, last and next are going to be historic for the phone industry.

Here are some of my observations (crossposted on Twitter) while watching the Palm Pre announcement:

• The Palm Pre would not have happened if the iPhone hadn’t happened first. But, Apple needs to respond ASAP.
• Developers Developers Developers Developers. Developers Developers Developers Developers. CSS, JS, Ajax, HTML.
• If you browse to one of your Outlook contacts, their Facebook contact info will appear, too, if you are connected there.
• If you are on a call and you place the phone on the inductive charger, the call moves to speakerphone.
• Typing while no app is in the foreground starts a device-wide search for content or apps that match your text entry.
• Conversations are in one pane even if they move from IM to SMS to IM.
• PalmPilot: Centralize todo, calendar, documents, etc. Treo: Combine MP3 player, camera, PDA, Phone. Pre: Unify your online personas.
• Web Browser Instances are treated, each, as currently running apps. They are each in the carousel with email, etc.
• Task switching is baked in. Currently running apps appear in a carousel and can be discarded by swiping them up.
• The application launcher appears, translucently, over the current foreground app. Like glass.
• The CPU (TI OMAP 3430) has horsepower and Palm is the first to use it in a phone.