You know a company is in deep trouble when its chief executive leaves on the eve of its annual developers conference.

While the Palmsource website still states that David Nagel will deliver the opening keynote at its developers conference on Tuesday in San Jose, California, the CEO left the company last weekend.

Palmsource develops the Palm OS software that runs on PalmOne's handheld computers and the Treo mobile phone. The software has lost most of the momentum that it had during the era when PDAs were hot. These days few people want to carry around a bulky device containing their calendar and address book.

The downfall in Palm OS's popularity caused Sony to stop making Palm OS handhelds altogether. Currently PalmOne is the only serious customer for the software company. Unless you want to count those utterly useless and unfashionable PDA watches that Fossil produces as a viable PDA offering.

Palmsource naturally will stress that there is nothing to worry about at tomorrow's event. But you just know that the @#%@ has hit the fan when a CEO leaves on such short notice.

Photo Credit: (c) PalmSource. David Nagel during happier times.