Palm Arena

You might have noticed that during the the latter hours of the evening yesterday the App Catalog became unavailable. We now know the reason for that. Other then the fact that three apps saw an update (a trio of PicHunt apps from EpicTilt), the App Catalog lost two apps.

The first was the FriendsFlow app. The reason why it was pulled stems from the fact that Facebook recently changed the way Facebook works and thus breaking the application. However the developer is working on a fix and it should be back shortly.

The second app to be pulled was the BlockDrop app, a Tetris variant that had graduated from the homebrew crowd into the official App Catalog. So far there is no word as to why it was pulled but we are hearing speculation that it might be because Tetris has already released a demo app and is planning on an official version for a later release on the App Catalog. Couple that with the fact that the App Store from iTunes had a similar issue and it might shed light as to why it was pulled. At any rate its just speculation and no official word has been released on it.

Palm is taking the gloves off and going all out to court the support of developers for its webOS platform. No we’re not talking about gimmicks but some real incentives. First of all (as if inspired by the homebrew community) developers will not need to have their apps accepted into the App Catalog for Palm to approve help with the distribution. That means developers will be able to submit an application to Palm, they will get a web link which they can distribute however they want. Palm will not be screening such apps so no restrictions (unlike a certain fruity phone we know).

Palm is still offering the App Catalog to those developers who are willing to pay $50 to get their apps in. And presumably this will be the only way to distribute a paid app.

For those who are big fans of opensource, the next set of words will speak to your heart. Palm is waving the $99 yearly fee it normally charges developers who are developing for the webOS platform if they make their apps opensource. Not only that but Palm will also be offering analytical data to developers, if you remember Apple keeps their App Store in Cupertino HQ.

All this information is coming VIA an official San Francisco meeting where Palm is demoing their two newest employees, Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer, both from the Mozilla camp. And guess what, all audiance members will be getting a free Pre as well as Touchstone Wireless charger.

BTW: Jon Rubinstein did the honors.

VIA: TechCrunch!

Palm App Catalog Download Stats

This is big news for Palm. Just 18 days after the Palm Pre was launched, its App Catalog has seen 1 million downloads on over 150,000 devices. This means the average download per device has been 6+ apps. These are not official numbers as Palm is keeping their mouth shut on this one. But the news comes from the respected Medialets which brought us the first wave of good news about the App Catalog a few days ago when it had nearly topped the 700,000 mark. Now it has gone over.

This of course is pale in comparison to the App Store when it was first released which hit the 1 million mark 17 days earlier. But it should be pointed out that the App Store (from iTunes) had 16x the amount of apps and 26x the number of devices. If this says anything to Apple, one thing is clear, it has some real competition in the mobile space.

webOS App Store Download Stats

If you think that the title is a typo, it is not! It has been just two weeks since the App Store launched and already there has been 666,511 apps downloaded to date. But what makes this number even more impressive is the fact that just 30 apps acre currently available.

No we’re not saying that this is the best thing ever, but does shed some light on what the numbers will be like when the SDK for webOS goes live later this summer. You can read the entire article as well as the chart breakdown at Medialets.com