Palm Pre Apps Catalog Hopefully a Bit Less Sparse by Fall

The drought of third-party mobile apps for Palm’s new Pre handset is almost over. Though the company had warned that its release would be delayed until late summer, Palm today opened its long-awaited Mojo Software Development Kit to the public.

About time, too.

“The initial response to Palm webOS apps–from both developers and customers–has been enthusiastic,” said Jon Zilber, Palm director of online communications, in a blog entry on Thursday. “Even in its initial beta stage, over 1.8 million apps have been downloaded from the beta App Catalog since Palm Pre was released less than six weeks ago. Thousands of developers have participated in the Mojo SDK early access program since it began in early April. New applications are in the pipeline for the Palm App Catalog, and the App Catalog submission process will be opened to all developers beginning this fall.”

The fall, huh? Well, that’s a bit of a disappointment. It doesn’t seem wise to delay the submissions process when the lack of SDK-access has already hampered development of applications for the device. After all, Palm (PALM) has a lot of catching up to do if it hopes to offer even a decent alternative to Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes App Store, which currently boasts around 65,000 applications, the work of some 100,000 developers.

FURTHER READING: Pre and Web OS: Longtime Palm Developers Sound Off