One Million Palm Pre Apps Downloaded

Well, here’s a nice data point to consider in advance of Palm’s earnings tomorrow. The company’s Pre App Catalog, which has been widely criticized for its paltry selection, just reached one million downloads.

Not bad for an app store that launched with just 18 applications and currently boasts only 30. Think of how many more downloads there might have been, if the company wasn’t so maniacally selective in its distribution of the WebOS SDK.

“Just 18 days after the launch of the Palm Pre, their App Catalog has hit its first major milestone, 1 million downloads,” reports mobile analytics outfit Medialets. “On launch day, Palm sold 50k devices and their App Catalog experienced 100k downloads–that’s an average of 2 apps downloaded per device and 5,500 downloads per app (with a low of 600 and a high of 20k). 18 days later and they’ve tripled the user base to 150k units, averaging 6+ apps downloaded per device and 33.3k downloads per app (with a low of 2.4k and a high of 114k).”

Now, granted, Palm’s (PALM) one million downloads in 18 days doesn’t even begin to approach the performance of Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes App Store, which reached a similar milestone in about a day. But as Medialets notes, it’s not really fair to compare the two. “The App Store hit the 1 million download point about 17 days earlier than the App Catalog, housing more than 16x the amount of apps and was accessible by more than 26x the number of devices than the App Catalog,” the firm says. “Still comparing at the 1 million mark, the average Palm Pre user had downloaded 26x the number of apps that iPhone users had, and the average app in the App Catalog experienced 16x the number of downloads that apps in the App Store had experienced.”