The simple version is that they screwed up. Palm management thought that they had a full year after launch to roll out their developer program. They obviously

The simple version is that they screwed up. Palm management thought that they had a full year after launch to roll out their developer program. They obviously miscalculated the importance of having a functional app store from the get-go. To their credit, they ramped up pretty fast. Last September, they hired Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer (the Bespin guys) to run developer relations. Ben and Dion immediately restructured the developer program, and Palm had their big developer program rollout in December/January, six months after launch. As of today, the 'App Catalog' is tiny but growing at a pretty good clip. They're at over 1500 apps right now, and are growing at around 20% a month. If they can survive another year, they should be up to Blackberry levels.