According to Palm Developer relations, because there's money to be made on an uncrowded platform. There are plenty of existing TouchPad owners thanks to the firesale, and those that use their devices are willing to pay to improve their experience (since the experience won't likely be improved by HP themselves long-term). And you might have more success short-term by selling smaller apps on the Palm Marketplace than you would fighting for space in Android's.
I've talked in 2002 or 2003 to a guy who was still developing fro BeOS at the time. Better have a near monopoly on an uncommon OS than be some invisible me-too :)
The question is: is there a profitable long-term market in the Touchpad?
Who actually bought the device? Corporations who will commit to long term usage (I doubt it) or tech nerds who will flash the device to run Android (leading to a different, well-populated market) or tech nerds who will use the device as is (and abandon it in a year or two)?
Honestly, this sounds like very short-term thinking on the part of Palm.
I bought the device because I honestly believe that WebOS is an interesting take on a tablet OS (and I like it much better over Android). However I will not be purchasing any apps on the device. I use it strictly as an eReader.
Not necessarily. At least a couple of devs I personally know have made more money on WebOS than Android (none of them developed for iOS so no idea about that).
