Those of you that might have been wondering how many Palm Pre units have been sold since the handset was released on the market, now have an answer: 150,000. RBC Capital’s Mike Abramsky is the one to have made the estimation, which surpasses previous forecasts that pointed towards a number of 120,000 Palm Pres sold during the handset's 19 days of availability. The exact number should be announced by Palm at its financial conference call today.

The number might not look so impressive when compared to the more than 1 million iPhone 3GS units Apple claims it managed to sell in the device's first three days of availability, yet it is good enough for Sprint and Palm, it seems. Moreover, the interest in the Pre is reported to be rising, which means that more units will come to users in the near future, providing that the two companies are able to meet demand (they are experiencing shortages at the moment).

According to Abramsky, more handsets powered by the new webOS platform are expected to come to the market in the near future, which would help Palm quite a lot. At the same time, the Pre is expected to become available through a wider range of carriers around the world, including O2, AT&T, Verizon, Telefonica and Vodafone, a move that should be made before the first half of 2010 ends.

In related news, we learn that owners of the handset worldwide have downloaded applications from its software portal, the App Catalog, in excess of 1 million. Considering the small number of applications available for the phone on the portal (30) and the number of users that grabbed their Pre already, that is to be quite impressive.

According to nytimes.com’s Bits Blog, Gartner mobile analyst Ken Dulaney stated that “Sprint (NYSE: S) users are starved for smartphones and applications. But, chances are they’ve all probably downloaded the same kinds of apps. The question is, are they satisfied with what they have and what is there beyond those offerings?” The idea would be that Palm needs to come with new apps to the portal in the near future so as to maintain momentum.