Palm Pre struggling to drive downloads from App Catalogue
By Will Park on Sunday, June 21st, 2009 at 11:36 AM PST In Hottest Hardware, Palm, Palm Pre, Research, Web OS
In the two weeks after the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre’s launch, which saw Sprint (NYSE: S) stores across the country selling-out of Palm Pre stock, the iPhone 3G S was the talk of the town. Fortunately for Palm, the Pre is back in the spotlight. This time, we take a look at the Pre and its ability to drive downloads from the App Catalogue, Palm’s own WebOS applications store.
Medialets has announced download statistics for Palm’s App Catalogue, and things are looking a bit sad. After two weeks in operation, the App Catalogue has seen just shy of 700,000 WebOS application downloads. That number might sound like a lot, and it is, but compared to Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s AppStore, Palm has a lot of catching up to do.
At the end of its first month in service, the iPhone AppStore pushed some 60 million apps to iPhone and iPod Touch users. By the six-month mark, Apple announced that 500 million apps had already been downloaded. Compare those figure to Palm’s 700K downloads, and things start to look a little less rosy for Palm. One of the biggest problems? The lack of WebOS apps on the App Catalogue.
Palm has already taken steps to embrace the developer community. With good community support and a WebOS SDK release, we could see the Palm App Catalogue explode with tons of new WebOS apps. At launch, the App Catalogue boasted just 18 apps. It now is home to 30 apps. In comparison, the AppStore had over 500 apps on deck for its inaugural launch.
Let’s say Palm has 100,000 Palm Pre’s activated in the US (a conservative guess based on launch-weekend sales estimates of around 100,000). That means each and every Palm Pre user had to download about seven apps from the App Catalogue in the past two weeks. That’s a fairly healthy number of app downloads per handset, especially given that there are just 30 apps available to date. With a little more time and some serious developer support, the App Catalogue might soon gain the traction it needs to take on the AppStore.
[Via: Gizmodo]
This comparison is really stupid. To simply say things don’t look good for palm is ridicules. Apple had millions of phones out, and a ton of apps when the app store opened. If you want to do a good comparison, you should do a ratio/index. Something like app downloads per user per available apps. I’m just sick of reading stuff like this on the internet that make terrible comparisons.
At it again, eh? Is Apple the gold standard against which all things are compared? How about we compare your site against, oh, let’s say G4TV.com, in terms of page views in the past two weeks. Here’s my headline: “IntoMoblie.com struggles to drive any readers to their site.”
I do commend you, though, Will. I was shaking my head up until I read the last paragraph, which seems to contradict everything else you’d written up to the point. Everyone knows Palm is smaller than Apple and that was the one paragraph that didn’t loose itself in that fact.
er… “lose itself”. dang my typing skils.
Okay read your last paragraph too… so why the misleading title? Never thought one little device could actually OWN the media… conspiracy theorists would have a field day with this!
by the time the iphone app store came out, there were already millions of devices sold around the world, which compared to palm’s is not even fair
the palm pre has been sold exclusively in the US so far, and there are only about 100.000 devices running
probably if the palm app store had come out a bit later, with an established platform like the mac OSX is, those digits would have been way higher
just give it time, i think the webOS is even better than the mac OSX even tho it will never reach the popularity of the later
The last paragraph? The headline is where the story is made or broken and I call Will and this story a Fail! Will is using these headlines to put a spin on his articles to drive users to his site. This should have had in bold letters “commentary by an apple fan boy”.
Jesus, at least do some analysis beforehand. And how is this “via Gizmodo”? Gizmodo knows how to at least how to do fair reporting. What’s your source for saying Palm is “struggling”? Is this your job or your hobby?
Tsk, tsk Will… You got it wrong! You’re the sad subject in this story
John, I concur completely with you. The author also neglected to compare the established base that Apple had of iPhone users in the millions. Were he to divide the number of iPhones at Apple’s App launch into the number of app downloads, the number downloaded per phone would almost be the same number as the Pre’s.
Given Apple has a huge number of apps, perhaps that speaks more about the quality of all those thousands of apps than anything else.
how can you compare these 2? apple’s apps have been out and have been made for 2 years….palms have been out for 2 weeks…..u cant compare the 2.
First of all, why must the Palm Pre “take on” the Apple App store? You give us numbers saying that Pre users haven’t matched the iPhone in the number of downloaded apps. Hello. Apple launched their app store months after the phone had been released for sale. It is almost the same path Palm has taken. The formal (non beta) app catalog will launch at the end of the summer. Besides, just how many of the 50,000 apps in the Apple store are garbage? How many apps will the average user install on their handsets? Unless there is an app that will wipe your arse for you, how many of them will serve an ACTUAL purpose in your daily life?
There is plenty of room for competition in the smartphone market. Thankfully, there is a choice for those of us who need not be tempted by rotten fruit.
…Wow… Apple Fanboy extraordinare I see. Did anybody catch the ‘Rosy Palm’ jab? In any case, I think you still need to sell more than 100,000 units if you intend to get more app downloads on a device. You gotta love the math being used here: Will is using app download statistics for the iPhone a YEAR after the iPhone was released. From what I’ve read, the iPhone sold in the MILLIONS during the first year, if not exceeding 10 million in sales. Do the math here, and you’ll see that the average download number during that first month per phone would be about 7 apps a phone. Hmm, let’s see here: Palm sells 100,000 units… Palm App Store has 700,000 apps downloaded… HOLY CRAP! THAT’S 7 APPS DOWNLOADED PER PHONE!!!
Yeah, get a life Will Park, if thats your REAL name…
… to clarify, I was saying the iPhone ONLY sold, or had the same amount of downloads per iPhone in the first month with their app store, where the Palm has done the same average of downloads in the first two weeks with a mere FRACTION of units in consumers hands.
God! Why make a stupid point when you alread know you are blowing smoke! Write real journalism man! You’re 2 year old could have come up with something more original.
Okay, I called you names in the last post out of frustration (sorry) but now I understand why you are posting such crazy stuff. You are either a total Apple fan boy or you think that by posting negative stories you’ll drive visitors to your site. Have you used a Pre? Have you used one for more than a couple days? I’ve used both a Pre (got it on launch day) and an iPhone (about two weeks). The Palm kicks the iPhone’s butt in every way but number of apps and give it a few months and the apps will be there. One more question. How long was the iPhone out before the app store was online?
Will, I think Palm must be doing very well if you are comparing them to the Iphone who has a two year head start. Also, you failed to mention in your numbers that Apple didn’t have an App Store until the original Iphone was over a year old. That means that Palm is already ahead of where Apple was when they launched their revolutionary Iphone. If Palm waited a year to launch the App Catalogue then they would probably have 500 apps at launch and more downloads too. Also, Palm would have more phones sold for users to download the apps. I don’t know if you just love Apple or what the issue is here, but please give all the facts when you write a hit piece such as this one. Maybe John is right and you are just trying to drive readers to this website, but not everyone will like one sided articles.
You couldn’t give me an Iphone. Tried to talk myself into buying
an Iphone three times. So glad I didn’t get one. The Pre is so
much better. Everything I wanted in a smartphone and more!
Will, I’m just curious when the iphone came out, was there an app store for it? Some quick wiki research point to the iphone came out in June 29, 2007, Apple app store for the iphone didn’t open until July 10, 2008. So as you are criticizing the Palm Pre for the lack of applications from it’s app store, are you forgetting the iphone didn’t have an app store until more than a year l later after it’s phone came out.
No one is perfect, but to compare one company new product growth vs someone who is already establish is quite unfair. I’m guess if you had this job when the iphone came out, you were bitching where were the 3rd party applications for the iphone because smartphones like the blackberry had 3rd party apps already. You argument is lacking evidence but made up stories to justify your existence. Please go away.
“One more question. How long was the iPhone out before the app store was online?”
I was hoping he would include that in the article- you know, the balance thing. In the last paragraph it would have been nice to compare apps downloaded per phone. Either it was lazy reporting or the numbers would not support the headline.
You need to update your article: http://www.prethinking.com/storage/temp/aps_downloads_app_0000.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1245531085988
this is a stupid comparison.
iphone had been out for a year which made lots of sales while the pre just released with an app store so if you think about it, the pre is ahead. wow very stupid comparison.
I agree with a lot of posts on this board, the Pre is fresh and so is their App Store… it’s something you can’t even compare. If Palm had the same amount of phones sold and available apps as Apple then this might be a compelling story.
Palm does need to ramp up the Apps being that most of them that are there today where there on launch day… when the Pre has a robust App Store then I have a good feeling the tables will turn.
Interesting article. However, let’s forget that there are also many trashy apps on the iPhone. I have a Pre, and have only 2 apps–Where and Pandora, both which run well and are helpful. If I get fewer, but more quality apps on the Pre, I’ll be happy.
What’s with all the apologists, everyone bags MS and Apple friends when they carry on like that.
Sure it is true that Mobile OSX had more units in the wild when the appstore launched. This is not the whole story though because actually Apple had only released the iPhone in the USA and then much later a couple of Euro countries and Canada before the AppStore, which came out along with iPhone 3G. Also in the sales stats the first year of iPhone sales was not huge, the coming of the 3G, true global roll out, AppStore and significant price drop tripled sales.
Apple also seriously bungled OS2.0, it was buggy, slow and took them months to fix it, yet even that didn’t stop the force of downloading; heck for the first month or so syncing between iTunes and the iPhone didn’t even work properly with Apps certainly not syncing much at all. One might say Apple did everything to stuff up the AppStore and failed.
All that aside, Palm launches into a different world now, where the luxury of a year or two isn’t available. Apple had that luxury for better or worse. Now though Palm will be compared to what already exists, this is a simple fact also for better or worse. What this does mean for Palm though is that they need to act without luxury and I feel in this respect they are letting themselves down.
A USA only release on a non global network standard with a poor hardware build, very bad battery life, 8gig fixed, 30 apps after a month and a $299 price tag in the shop (rebates aside) is not serving the interests of WebOS and its potential.
If you have a long enough memory to remember the grilling that Apple’s iPhone got in the media for LOTS of issues, I’d say the media is being kindly to Palm, but the voice of dissent is growing.
Let’s also not forget that Apple is the new kid on the block, compared to Palm with a long history of smart phone leadership. Apple was and is consistently compared with Blackberry, Nokia and WinMo, all stalwarts of the smart phone market. Any feature the iPhone lacked compared to these other companies has been dissected and whipped up by the media as failure.
Why should Palm be treated any different really? Maybe they should be treated harsher, since they are not a new kid on the block.
Will this be Palm’s return to its prior lofty heights, as was Apple’s return in the early 2000’s? I hope so (my prior fav device was based on Palm OS) but at this stage I think they are on shaky ground and have botched as much as they have lashed.
On a sideways note. The webapps with Palm have two difference over the original iPhones webapp notion, hardware access and local database. OS3.0 on iPhone seems to have quietly added local database support for web applications, you can see it in settings and it seems to sync with your computer because my GF’s gmail database appeared on the iPhone even though she has never used the iPhone to access gmail but she has on my laptop. So sadly it would seem even the Pre’s better webapp implementation advantage is now being reduced.
Go Palm, go hard, we need strong new leaders in this industry, not just Apple which isn’t likely to really innovate if it doesn’t have to.
Final note.
A true comparison would be to look at how many webapps were available for the first iPhone release and how many “downloads” were done. I’ve never seen this data anywhere.