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Ares SDK goes public as Palm smartphone sales drop

Following earlier reports that smartphone manufacturer Palm was working on a new software development kit (SDK) called Ares, the web-based development environment is now available to the public for webOS application development.

Delivering mobile app development right into the browser, the SDK is aimed at making it easier for developers to build mobile apps for the Palm Pre and Pixi handsets. In contrast to the smartphone manufacturer's Java-based Mojo SDK, much of the Ares interface is drag-and-drop with no install necessary.

News of the availability of the SDK, which also features a visual debugger, source control integration, log viewer and a robust code editor, comes in the same week Palm revealed a slight decline in sales from the previous quarter of the year.

The company said it shipped a total of 783,000 smartphones to retailers in the three months to the end of November, an increase of 41 per cent compared with the same period last year, but down five per cent on the three months previous.

Palm's chief executive acknowledged the competition his company has faced from rival handsets including Apple's iPhone, the Motorola Droid and the BlackBerry devices from Research In Motion.