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It's no news to anyone that Palm is desperate to make a success of its Palm Pre phone. It was met with very solid reviews initially, and AdMob's latest wireless traffic metrics show it gaining market share. Nevertheless, Palm's recent revenue forecast missed Wall Street applications by a long shot, and that's heading into the important holiday season, when the iPhone and many new Android handsets are likely to go on a tear.

Apple's success with the iPhone, of course, has a lot to do with its App Store, which has now moved over 2 billion applications. To put that 2 billion number in perspective, that's not far behind the total number of songs sold on iTunes since its inception years ago. Palm would very wise to try to compete with Apple's App Store through openness in its Palm App Catalog, along the lines of how Android Market pursues openness. That's why it's disturbing news that a Netscape veteran is reporting that his apps were rejected from the App Catalog because the source code was available elsewhere.

Smartphone owners love their push email and easy syncing options. Let's face it, without those handy features, handheld mobile devices are little more than really clunky cell phones. Now Open-Xchange customers can use the newly released OXtender for Business Mobility to receive push email and sync their calendars and contacts right over the air on an iPhone, BlackBerry, myTouch and most other smartphones on the market today.

Open-Xchange is a popular alternative to Microsoft Exchange that also syncs and supports Macs and Apple Mobile devices. It's used to manage email, tasks, calendars, documents, contacts, and even social networking communication.

What will advanced Android-based smartphones look like a year from now, and what will be under the hood? Motorola would have you believe that they'll place very heavy emphasis on unified social networking features. Archos has its eyes on tablets that double as smartphones, with advanced video capabilities. China Mobile and others believe that Android will work best in forked, unique versions.

Now, according to a PC World report, next year may bring the first 4G Android smartphone--much faster than current phones--with? WiMax capabilities. This type of phone could represent a big leap forward.

Things are looking increasingly bad for Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system, and they may be looking bad for Palm, too. As GigaOm notes: Like a desperate gambler down to his last few chips, Palm is ditching Windows Mobile and going all in with its own webOS. That will leave the Pre as Palm's big bet in the smartphone arena, and the company has said that the Pre now accounts for the vast majority of the smartphones that it sells (823,000 units in the most recent quarter, in line with analyst's expectations).

What's more notable to me, though, is that as the heavily fragmented world of operating systems for smartphones begins to whittle itself down to a few competitors, players that rely either entirely or partly on open source are making the best bets.

The smartphone market has remained very healthy throughout the economic downturn, and it looks like the next big area of opportunity for smartphones, mobile operating systems and applications will be China. As we reported a few days ago, the iPhone is headed to China through a deal that Apple has struck with China Unicom, and China Mobile--the market leading wireless provider--has increasingly embraced the open source Android operating system. Specifically, Dell's new Android smartphones are part of China Mobile's application platform, and? the company has its own Ophone operating system (based on Android).

It's already been clear that there will be a huge battle between open source and proprietary mobile operating systems in China, but now, as The Register reports, things are getting even more complicated. It seems that Symbian, the platform on nearly half of smartphones, could start gaining a Chinese foothold even before the iPhone and Android phones arrive there.

HTC has announced its fourth mobile phone based on the open source Android operating system, dubbed the HTC Tattoo. You can take a visual tour of it here. The Tattoo runs the HTC Sense user interface on top of Android, and the name Tattoo comes from its design customizability.

Tattoo users can choose from a variety of phone colors, and even design unique covers. There are also inking options for illustrations on the phone's case. Meanwhile, the HTC Sense user interface allows users to create their own home pages, combining links to frequently used sites and services, photos, and more. It's particularly loaded with social networking conveniences.