Palm Pre Apps: 1 Million Served, With SDK On The Way?

According to a blog post from Medialets, which tracks application popularity and development for mobile platforms, Palm sold about 50,000 Palm Pres on its June 6 launch day and about 100,000 downloads. As of June 24, Palm had sold about 150,000 Palm Pres with an average of six apps downloaded per Palm Pre and about 33,000 downloads per app.

Where does that put the Palm Pre relative to Apple's iPhone, which at this point is practically synonymous with mobile apps? According to Medialets, the iTunes App Store hit the 1 million mark for downloads one day after its release, as opposed to 18 for the Palm Pre. Apple did it with 16 times the number of apps available, however, and 26 times the number of users. Using Medialets' calculations, apps in Palm Pre's App Catalog were, on average, downloaded 16 more times than apps in the Apple App Store.

While the numbers don't present an, uh, apples-to-apples comparison of the two smartphones' app stores -- there are too many other factors to consider -- they do confirm that Palm Pre users are hungry for applications.

While Palm has so far been cagey about when its software developer kit (SDK) would be released to the app-wild masses, late last week, a post on Palm's Developer Network blog said Palm's goal was to release the SDK by the end of the summer.

"We've been working very hard on the SDK and are eager to open access on a wider scale, but the software and the developer services to support it just aren't ready yet," wrote Chuq von Rospach, Palm's developer community manager.

According to von Rospach, the SDK will be released in stages, starting with adding more content to Palm's early access program, and opening the SDK to all legitimate requests "as soon as we can."