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Loading ...When Palm sent out invitations for users to trial an “innovative new product” earlier on this week, the criteria that participants must be heavy smartphone and email users, have a WiFi router and an account with Sprint led many to presume that it referred to the Treo 800w. That handset - long in the making, and believed to be hitting Sprint in July - is expected to have the usual full thumbboard as well as WiFi, EV-DO Rev.A and Windows Mobile 6, and it seems reasonable that Palm would be beta testing it around now. However, just as we were all about to file the rumor away, another possibility was suggested: could Palm be reviving the Foleo?
Intended as a companion device for Palm smartphones, the Foleo project was cancelled in September last year after serious and ongoing doubts that there was a market for a web and messaging-centric ultraportable. Critics pointed at its inability to run mainstream apps and its relatively high price ($599), and Palm decided to take their money and invest it in their next-gen mobile OS instead. Subsequently, ASUS have swept the board with their Eee PC - a low-power device ideal for web browsing and messaging - and kick-started a new niche of small, budget notebooks usually running cut-down OSes.
Was the Foleo, ironically, ahead of its time? Looking at the price, it’s hard to see how it would fit - in its state when Palm canned the project, reliant on a connected smartphone - into the current ecosystem. Yet with some reworking it could undoubtedly join the budget-ultraportable throng: WiFi for connectivity rather than just a Palm handset, standalone apps and a MacBook Air-style design would surely find buyers.
We won’t know anything for sure until the product launches (or, more likely, one of the beta testers “accidentally” lets something slip), but considering Palm’s dismal financial performance last quarter they could really do with a turn under that UMPC halo.
As Morpheus said: Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony. A lot of people (a certain blog starting with the letter E included) bashed Palm for their Foleo. Months later Asus is selling EeePc’s like gas on a “$2/galon” station and a gang of copycats and opportunists follow (although I think Nokia started the whole internet/messaging/not-phone concept, right?). In the end I wonder, why did people (press) killed the product without giving it a chance? Or was it the price of innovation? Perhaps bad marketing and/or price of the thing?
You make a good point, J.O. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that tech writers are really just the same (or more jaded, if anything) as everyone else looking in on the gadget world, and we have the same preconceptions - and tendancy to follow the crowd opinion - as the people reading the blogs and watching the video demos.
I do think, though, that Palm wouldn’t now have - or have had at the time - as much success with the Foleo as it stood, reliant on a smartphone. The Eee might be similar in size and functionality, but the fact that it stands on its own makes a huge difference. What’s a shame is that it’s (perhaps) taken Palm this long - if a new Foleo really is on the cards - to catch on to the potential of a re-worked WiFi verision. I just hope they don’t miss the budget-ultraportable moment.
Hey, im a DIE HARD Palm FANATIC.. I was very excited to be able to get my hands on a foleo. But once you dig in a little and realize the lack of functionality that it would have, its poor implementation, and the fact that PALM needs to revamp its PALM OS COMPLETELY as evidenced by the CONSTANT crashing and lawsuits against them for their TREO Smartphones, it was probably in palms best interest to work on improving their current smartphones and to compete in their main product lineup before entering yet another market space. It sounds crazy but PALM has been dead as a company for years, it took apple to come with a revolutionary new interface for a smartphone for them to finally wake up. Hopefully now they do something with the pain they are experiencing from the swift kick in the *** that apple is giving them with the iphone.
Also, i would like to point out that the EEE PC has great appeal to linux users because it is a perfect platform for Linux just as the ASUS WL-700ge Serious of Wireless Router appliances have gained WIDESPREAD adoption in the Custom Firmware Router underground with such open source projects as Open WRT, and DD WRT.
I suspect some of the users in this market space are also the ones interested in the EEE PC. Additionally, the EEE PC Implementation isn’t trying to tie itself to a Platform, like the FOLEO was designed to do, poorly, unfortunately.
Additionally the price / performance ratio of the ASUS EEE PC compared to that of the FOLEO is much much better, you get a lot of bang for the buck at the 549 price point that the new bigger screen asus EEE PC costs.
Who wants to shell out 400 dollars for a crappy(comparatively speaking) buggy TREO with a 5 year old O/S and then spend another 4 or 5 hundred dollars for an equally buggy and crappy Companion. Why spend almost 1000 dollars for these two items when you can use the truly effective although still admittedly limited screen size iPhone.
IMHO a phone was never meant to browse the web to the degree that you should be able to on a PC, but the FOLEO should be able to bridge this GAP, if they bring it to market with browsing capabilities close to a desktop.
this is something palm shouldve thought of in the begining…….they was waiting for another company to bring one of thier small pc’s out and palm now look at it as a mass market…..come on palm…thank god i did not deal with them from first
The Foleo was an underpowered PDA tarted up in subnotebook costuming. It would not have worked, period.
I think what’s up is Palm is working with Celio’s Redfly:
http://mikecane2008.wordpress......ry-device/
Palm no longer has the financial resources to put out another Foleo, nor does it have time, nor does it have a real OS.
The tasks most people use their Eees for:
Email.
Light surfing.
Documents.
Could Foleo do these things? Yes? Could it do these things better than an Eee? Instant-on, full keyboard, and twice the battery life. Yes.
The Foleo would have a market. But first needs is to lose the silly smartphone companion marketing angle.
I wouldn’t mind buying it if they kept the smartphone companion angle if the price was right.
But you cant make a product severely underpowered even for browsing tasks and have such a high price point.
Also, there would need to be applications like UltraSoft Money that would run and take advantage of the bigger screen. All of the current database, planner, and mostly any application that could take advantage of that bigger screen and full size keyboard would need to be ported over and have the capability to run on it.
Now thats a good idea.