The Pixi, said Senior Vice President Kevin Packingham, "is fun and easy to use." He noted its multi-touch screen, full QWERTY keyboard, messaging and social-networking capabilities, and $99.99 price with a two-year service agreement and rebates. There are reports that the Pixi will sell as low as $30 through mass retailers, such as Wal-Mart.

'Like Flipping' Cards

Palm highlighted Pixi's ability to keep multiple activities open and allow users to move between them with natural gestures, "like flipping through a deck of cards." The company said this allows a user to move easily between e-mail and web browsing while enjoying music.

Other features include linked contacts, where a single view links contacts from various sources, and layered calendars, so the user can toggle between one calendar and a variety of them. There is also combined messaging, enabling all conversations with the same person to be seen in a chat-like view, even if it started in IM and moved to text messaging.

Avi Greengart, an analyst with Current Analysis, noted the Pixi's small form factor and described it as "Sprint's bid for an entry-level touchscreen smartphone."

The new product, he said, is aimed "at the same crowd" that bought Palm's successful Centro model. He said he enjoys the new webOS, and that it would be "a no-brainer" for anyone looking for a webOS product to pay slightly more for the Palm Pre and its additional features -- not the least of which is "a larger screen with higher resolution."

Nokia, Dell, HP ?

Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein has told news media that he expects to sell about 10 million webOS-based products next year, which would amount to about five percent of the smartphone market.

Once a market leader, Palm is struggling to regain its footing with its new webOS-based products. But the new technology also makes the company a more attractive target for acquisition. Over the weekend, a variety of rumors suggested Nokia as a possible buyer.

Greengart, while noting that he can't comment on takeover rumors, said the rumors "weren't surprising." He added that "if Palm doesn't continue to make it as an independent brand, someone will buy them."

He pointed out that Nokia products already run on two mobile platforms, Symbian and Maemo, which would imply that another operating system like webOS -- among Palm's key assets -- might not be that useful to Nokia. In fact, he said, "a case could be made" that an acquisition of Palm would make more sense to a computer maker like Dell or Hewlett-Packard , which are both moving into mobile.