We don't have hard numbers yet, but according to some analysts, Palm probably sold between 50,000 and 60,000 Pres in this opening weekend, and Palm verifies over 150,000 app downloads in the first day alone.

Of course, the original iPhone sold about 146,000 units in its opening weekend, but it was the first major touchscreen smartphone and offered basic navigation like multitouch that hadn't been seen before. Plus, AT&T is just a far larger carrier than Sprint. Analysts have deemed the Pre launch successful, about as big as expected, and may have been even bigger had there not been shortages. We're really excited about that huge app downloads number: It means people are really excited about apps and should be a good encouragement for Palm to get more apps up as soon as possible. We'll update with more solid numbers when we get them. [ZDNet and The Official Palm Blog]

Send an email to Dan Nosowitz, the author of this post, at dnosowitz@gizmodo.com.