The Palm Pre smartphone has been chugging along since its introduction, although it’s been a bit overshadowed by the iPhone OS 3.0 and iPhone 3G S announcements. Let’s do a quick roundup of news about Palm and the Palm Pre. No, we still don’t know yet when we’ll see a GSM Palm Pre.

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First off, Palm’s App Catalog has been doing well. The App Catalog is Palm’s version of the Apple App Store. Even though the number of applications is still small, Palm Pre users have been downloading apps at a steady pace. Medialets reports that although we only have about 30 apps right now, these apps have been downloaded over 600,000 times. That’s certainly a good start — as the number of Pre users grow, we should see a similar explosive growth in app downloads.

Why are there so few apps right now? It turns out, Palm won’t be able to release the full SDK to developers until later this summer. Engadget reports that the software and developer services to support the SDK just aren’t ready yet.

When the iPhone first launched, for the first year all we had was web apps. Those apps are still around. So until the developers can get cracking on native webOS apps, you can take advantage of many web apps which work well with the Pre web browser.

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For early adopters of the Palm Pre, Palm has already released a software update. webOS 1.0.3 makes some improvements in the built-in Email, Calendar, and Contacts apps, among others.

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