Palm Pre playing catch-up in apps race

Palm’s Pre smartphone has been compared favorably to Apple’s iPhone since its launch June 6, but there’s one measure in which Palm’s offering falls woefully short: apps. The 30 mobile applications available in Palm’s App Catalog would barely fill one shelf inside Apple’s 50,000-item App Store.

But that may not matter as much, says one industry analyst, repeating the old refrain “it’s quality, not quantity� in determining which company offers the better overall mobile Web experience.

“If the applications are unique and they’re good they don’t have to have 50,000,� said Julien Blin, principal analyst at JBB Research in Los Angeles. He adds, as have others, that the app store market is growing on a number of fronts and that iPhone’s first-to-market advantage won’t pre-empt growth opportunities for others.

In preparation for the launch of Pre, Palm released a software development kit, called Mojo SDK, at a Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco April 1, but only privately, to “hundreds� of developers, and that “thousands� more are waiting to join the Palm Developer Network, said Palm spokeswoman Leslie Letts, without providing more specific numbers. She added that Palm also offers the Palm OS Emulator for developers on the previous Palm OS platform to convert their apps to run on the Pre’s webOS operating system.

But Apple made a dig at Palm at its Worldwide Developers Conference June 8 in San Francisco, noting that its App Store reached 50,000 apps, while Palm’s App Catalog had a mere 18. The count, based on a check over the previous weekend at each store, also pegged the Google Android inventory at 4,900 apps and the RIM BlackBerry App World count at about 1,000. Apple eclipsed the limelight from Palm’s Pre launch two days earlier by announcing at WWDC the coming June 19 launch of the new iPhone 3G S.

Palm’s director of communications, Derick Mains, updated the beta App Catalog count Tuesday to 30, and described them as “preview apps� that are an indication of how the apps will perform but not necessarily the final release version of them. They include: news from the Associated Press; a Fandango application for finding movie theaters near the user’s location, viewing trailers and buying tickets; and Citysearch, an online guide to multiple cities.

“We feel strongly that we don't have to beat Apple to win big because the market opportunity is huge,� Mains explained in an e-mail interview. Only about 20 percent of cell phone unit sales are smartphones, but all feature phones will eventually become smartphones, expanding the app market.

JBB Research’s Blin concurs, adding that so many app stores are offering so many apps that “it’s ridiculous.� Ridiculous or not, he continued, the market is growing and other app “retailers� have ample opportunities to serve the market created by Apple.

Palm may also have an edge on Apple in that Pre is the first smartphone to enable multitasking, which means the device can run multiple applications at once, something the iPhone can’t do, Blin explained. Multitasking could be a key driver of Palm mobile application sales.
“Everybody has been asking for that for some time and Palm is the first one to do that. That could be a key competitive advantage for Palm,� said Blin.

» posted by Robert Mullins

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

• Email
• Print
• Share
  • Slashdot
  • Digg
  • Stumble
  • Reddit
  • Newsvine