Palm App Catalog downloads top 800,000 in two weeks

Although Palm's App Catalog storefront currently offers only [1]30 mobile applications for the device maker's new Pre smartphone, consumers have so far downloaded more than 800,000 apps in all, 150,000 of them on the phone's first day of retail availability earlier this month. App Catalog--which went live nine days prior to the Pre's June 6 launch [2]--topped the 800,000 benchmark on June 20, three days after downloads totaled 660,000. At the current rate of about 46,700 Pre app downloads a day, App Catalog should clear the 1 million download mark by the end of this week.

Palm has not yet publicly released the SDK for the Pre's webOS operating system, severely limiting the number of applications developed for the device. Exclusive operator partner Sprint nevertheless maintains it is not concerned [3] by the relative scarcity of mobile apps optimized for the Pre: "You're not going to get a critical mass of developers coding for the new platform until you give them devices," Sprint vice president of product and technology development Kevin Packingham told The Wall Street Journal. "There's only so many things you can control in the initial delivery."

For more on the App Catalog download mark:
- read this Softpedia article [4]