Palm has finally given in to the idea that open development is the way to go on the Pre. At a conference today where the prime topic was the future of WebOS, the company announced that it would be allowing developers to distribute free apps over the web.

I would call this the Pre’s saving grace if it weren’t coming so late in the game, because it’s an incredible idea. Developers simply submit the apps to Palm on a review-/censor-free basis and receive a URL back for full distribution. On top of that Palm is waiving the $99 fee for developers using the free distribution method. Regular app submission for the App Catalog will still cost $50. The last brilliant stroke in Palm’s terribly tardy plan was giving each of the developers at the WebOS conference a free Pre with a month’s service and a Touchstone dock. The whole thing is really a great idea…3 months ago.

At this point developers are working with such a small user base that even free phones and unbridled distribution may not be enough to win them back. The Pre needed to see healthy app growth at launch. Instead the store was stagnant as Palm struggled to get the SDK out on time. This new program could have fostered explosive growth then, but now it will probably look more like Palm’s last flash in the pan.

Source: TechCrunch

Palm’s Pre has been getting price cuts all over the place since launch, proving at once that Palm really wants to get the phone into your hands and that consumers don’t like it enough to pay more than they would for a messaging dumb-phone. There’s even a deal for the next couple days to get a Pre for free. Palm could be selling the Pre for full price, though, if they would just get it together already.

By get it together I mean release a full-fledged app store. The App Catalog is still a pathetic shadow of what it could be, with too few apps and no paid support. With the 1.2 WebOS update that just went live users can finally re-download previously purchased apps for free, but the update really didn’t do much else. Nevermind that enormous changelog, which is mostly just optimization of existing features, Palm needs a major update to make the phone desirable. Until that happens, they can plan to watch Apple’s own store grow exponentially, shrinking Palm’s potential user base one iPhone at a time.