Palm Pre Apps and Palm's App Catalog: A Closer Look
The WebOS's App Catalog is a bit sparse at the moment, but it has a lot of potential. — Recommends — The Palm Pre might have a slick OS and stylish hardware, but when it comes to apps, it has a long road ahead of it.
Context & Ripple Effects
Palm had positioned webOS as a platform extending beyond a single handset in March, while early developers in April praised the operating system. That promise was tested by early hands-on app impressions and May warnings that Palm could not alienate developers. The sparse catalog makes developer participation—not just the Pre’s hardware and interface—the immediate constraint on the broader platform strategy.
First-order effects
- Pre buyers have a limited application selection at launch, leaving Palm’s software proposition less complete than its webOS presentation suggests.
- Palm must convert early developer enthusiasm into catalog submissions; the reported forthcoming SDK is central to giving outside developers a route to build for webOS.
Second-order effects
- Palm’s developer relations become a product issue: policies or tools that frustrate developers would slow the catalog’s growth and weaken the platform case outlined in warnings about developer treatment.
- A thin catalog concentrates pressure on Palm to demonstrate that webOS can support more than the Pre, matching the company’s earlier broader platform ambition.
Third-order effects
- If Palm builds a reliable developer pipeline, webOS can become a software platform spanning devices; if it does not, handset design alone will have limited ability to sustain the platform strategy.
The trend: Smartphone competition is shifting from handset features toward the ability to attract developers and turn their software into a durable platform ecosystem.