Palm faces App Catalog backlog

Palm's decision to open development to everyone has left it facing more webOS app submissions than it can take, the company's Developer Community Manager Chuq Von Rospach admitted this week. After developers complained that they weren't getting responses regarding their own apps, the official told those affected that more have arrived "than we could handle well" and that three extra people have been recruited just to streamline app testing.

Von Rospach didn't say how many apps had been submitted since the necessary Mojo SDK was made publicly available in July, nor did he provide an indication of the balance of paid versus free apps.

The news is regardless an important sign for Palm, whose App Catalog has regularly trailed virtually all the others in terms of sheer size. Only about 30 apps were available shortly after the Pre's launch as the California company launched the Catalog in beta and only allowed a handful of developers early access. These also regularly had to be free apps as Palm didn't have a full payment system. That isn't expected to appear until webOS 1.2 goes live in the near future.

By comparison, Apple's success with the iPhone's App Store has been attributed in part to a coordinated release that saw nearly all developers get access at the same time and a formal rollout that waited until a full commercial infrastructure was in place.

By Electronista Staff