The first-ever MobileBeat conference in San Francisco on Thursday, pertaining to the up-and-coming mobile computing arena, saw Palm announce the launch of its Mojo Software Development Kit (SDK) for its newly-launched Pre smartphone. The SDK - unlike the earlier access program for a few Palm partners - will be available to all application developers interested in developing applications for the Pre.

According to an SDK-specific statement released on Palm's official blog, the company speeded up its process of readying the Pre SDK, to allow developers to write Pre applets based on web-standards - JavaScript, CSS, and HTML - which are already known to most of the potential developers.

The developers can download the SDK and create applications to run on Palm's totally new webOS operating system for its smartphones. Once the Palm Pre applets have been completed by the developers, they would have to await the Palm App Catalog that would go online in fall this year.

Palm is proceeding very systematically with apps to be developed with its Mojo SDK, which will be accessible by the web-savvy developers. While Palm's app store featured only free "preview apps," its online app store also has only 12 apps available for download.

Commenting on the Palm move, Michael Abbott - the company's senior VP of application software and services - said: "We are being very deliberate about scaling in a methodical way."