The highly anticipated Palm Pre was released into the wild about three and a half weeks ago, and previous reports pointed towards a number of around 150,000 units being sold. Although the number seems rather impressive in a way, given the fact that the device comes from a company that barely breathes and knowing that it sports a brand new operating system, the webOS, it can be also seen as insignificant when compared to the number of iPhones sold on the market since its launch, less than two weeks ago.

If we were to look at this from Palm's point of view, things seem rather OK, as the handset sees traction on the market, which means that the sales won't stop at this low point, although the Sunnyvale company hasn't unveiled any details on the number of units shipped until now. Even so, a recent report from Charter Equity Research analyst Edward Snyder, says moconews, shows that previous estimations on the Pre's sales might have been wrong.

According to him, discussions with manufacturing and retail channel sources have led to the idea that the actual number of Palm Pre units sold so far might be of around 300,000, double than previously believed, and that this could be one reason for which the handset has already seen shortages. At the same time, Edward Snyder also says that Palm is trying to meet demand, which is in line with what the phone maker and Sprint, the carrier that has the Pre exclusively throughout 2009, already stated.

Snyder's estimations, however, do not stop here. He also points towards a number of 15,000 Pres that are being shipped by Palm each day, while estimating that the number of sold units should reach 1 million before the end of the first full quarter of production. Moreover, he also says that Palm will try to push its device to more markets in the near future. At the same time, he expects another webOS-based handset to come to the market soon, carried by other operators, such as Verizon, which could launch the phone at the beginning of 2010, and AT&T, which should follow shortly after.