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September 4, 2007

Palm Foleo is Dead

My buddy Michael Ashby shared the news with me that the Foleo is dead:

In the course of the past several months, it has become clear that the right path for Palm is to offer a single, consistent user experience around this new platform design and a single focus for our platform development efforts.

To that end, and after careful deliberation, I have decided to cancel the Foleo mobile companion product in its current configuration and focus all of our energies on delivering out next generation platform and the first smartphones that will bring this platform to market.

Maybe the iPhone launch and success had an impact? Maybe the adrenaline rush from an impending death has imparted a wonderful focus?

I was worried about Palm and the Foleo when it launched, so I'm happy to hear this news. But apparently not everyone is happy about the decision:

I know there will be disappointed folks who were looking forward to carrying a Foleo for all their mobile computing needs. I am certainly one of them.

Dissapointment for the few people who would actually purchase an oddball sorta-kinda-laptop-handheld-thingamabob, running an odd operating system, that is.

But never fear faithful few! The Foleo is not completely dead, just sleeping! There are already dreams to revive the Foleo, running the new platform from Palm:

Jeff Hawkins and I still believe that the market category defined by Foleo has enormous potential. When we do Foleo II it will be based on our new platform, and we think it will deliver on the promise of this new category.

I'm glad to see Palm has regained some much needed focus on their rapidly shrinking smartphone business. I hope they can shed excess distractions and come up with something new to delight their customers.

I really hope they can do it before Apple releases iPhone v2, v3, v4, v5...

Related Links
Foleo, we hardly knew ye (Michael Mace)

September 4, 2007 5:41 PM | Palm | add to del.icio.us