Palm cancels Foleo to concentrate on next-gen smartphone

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	Home / Cell phones / Business smartphones

	Palm cancels Foleo to concentrate on next-gen smartphone	By Philip Berne, 4 September 2007

GALLERY

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The troubled smartphone companion will cost Palm $10M against earnings, but may see the light of day under the next Palm OS.

We don't normally read the blog of Palm CEO Ed Colligan, but after today's post, we might have to start. Colligan today announced on Palm's site that he had ordered the cancellation of the Palm Foleo product, even as company representatives had recently restated their claim that it would ship by Autumn. Though Colligan insists that the Foleo was near its shipping point, he also notes that there were still "a number of improvements" needed to make Foleo a winning product.

Instead of dividing time between the Foleo device, which ran a variation of Linux, and the Palm OS smartphones that are the backbone of Palm's business, Palm will be focusing entirely on developing its next-generation platform. Whether this is the version of Linux promoted by Palm investor Access, the Garnet OS (old Palm OS), the rights to which Palm purchased outright, or an entirely new and unseen OS remains a mystery. What is not a mystery is the fact that the Palm OS is aging rapidly, especially in the face of multimedia smartphones, most obviously the Apple iPhone.

The company will obviously continue to develop hardware for Windows Mobile, and Colligan even claims that a variation of the Foleo device could appear in the future bearing the new Palm platform, though he is careful not to speculate at a timeline. Additionally, no details were given about any upcoming Palm devices, especially the Palm Centro recently revealed by Sprint.

We weren't entirely sold on the new Palm Foleo, but we did see some potential, and were willing to reserve judgment until we had some hands-on time with the device. Clearly Palm is itching to get into the more-than-a-smartphone, less-than-a-PC market, as UMPCs have yet to take hold of an audience, and Palm has a knack for taking lead in a burgeoning market. Still, while the venerable smartphone maker was looking at smartphone companions, competitors snuck upon them with thinner, cooler phones, boasting better battery life, performance and, blasphemy, easier-to-use operating systems.

Palm has been under intense pressure recently to introduce a device with more "Wow!" factor, but with multi-year development cycles, prospects looked grim. Hopefully these recent developments mean innovation in the future for Palm, because an invigorated, innovative Palm would be beneficial to the marketplace as a whole.