What motivates developers?

Ever wonder what motivates a developer to write a Palm webOS app?

Sometimes it’s for the sheer enjoyment of the challenge, or developers are simply creating something they’d like to use themselves. For example, Andrew Munsell -- at 15 years old, one of the youngest webOS developers -- often has a personal need for the apps he creates, such as Stickyman.

Sometimes it’s just the right thing to do. After the earthquake in Haiti, Mediafly and Obtiva were moved to quickly create a Palm webOS app -- Hope for Haiti Now -- in about day. The app let users watch the Hope for Haiti Now LIVE! Telethon on their Palm Pre or Palm Pixi, providing links for making donations to help the international relief efforts.

Still, many developers are writing apps for their bread and butter. It is a business, after all, and there’s a lot of competition to write a best-selling app. To spur that race, the Palm “Hot Apps” program will award a total of $1 million to the developers of the most successful applications distributed between February 1 through May 31, 2010.

Whatever the motivation for writing apps, Palm webOS provides ample opportunities for developers to meet their goals… and deliver some great apps for Palm webOS users.

Paul Araquistain, Palm PR