Palm Withdraws Linux-Powered Foleo PC

M Saunders writes "Not long after we enjoyed playing with the device at LinuxWorld 2007, Palm has announced that it is shelving the Foleo handheld PC, before it was due to ship, so that the company can focus on a 'next-generation platform.' Palm hasn't ruled out a 'Foleo II' at some point, but for those of us looking forward to dinky Linux-powered laptops it's a bit of a disappointment. Still, with the Asus Eee PC nearby — and at a very low price point — perhaps it was a sensible move by Palm."

I'm not surprised.

It's not a laptop, but it's a reason to carry an extra charger, in addition to your smartphone's. Don't these product designers every travel?

Re:I'm not surprised.

Hopefully this will be the start of a trend..

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200612/19/eng200 61219_334047.html [peopledaily.com.cn]

They should use USB chargers for all portable devices (assuming USB has enough juice to charge it).

Very clever approach

Release details of a proposed product. Watch for reactions. See poor reactions and shelve product.

Way, way, cheaper than taking it all the way to market.

Still, I think the recipe was almost right. I have an (unfortunately broken) Psion 7. Very handy machine in its day: instant on, reasonably fast. Light... Give it a freshen up with a faster CPU, Wifi,... and you'd have a vry useful device.

The answer....

...to why it was cancelled is right here:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/21/dear-palm-its-t ime-for-an-intervention/ [engadget.com]

Palm actually listened as they mentioned in their reply:

http://blog.palm.com/palm/2007/08/thanks-engadget. html [palm.com]

What was the question?

That's a mostly insightful rant, but it's only got a couple of sentences about the Foleo. And that's a weak point — they're basically saying nobody will buy the Foleo if the Treo sucks. Which is kind of dumb, since the Foleo isn't that tightly bound to the Treo.

The big question with the Treo is whether there are enough people who need more than a PDA but less than a full laptop. Or maybe I should say, "who will buy less than a full laptop." Because there are a lot of technically clueless folks out there who'd be better off with a device that simpler than a "real" computer but does everything they need to do — most users just don't need all the functionality a PC provides. But every time somebody comes out with such a device, it fails miserably.

Why? Because such devices only cost a little less than an equivalent PC. And people would rather pay a little extra and get all that extra functionality. Even if it's functionality the won't use.

What I want to know is why Palm won't do a phone that isn't a minor variation on the Treo. There are still folks out there who don't need a QWERTY keyboard and do need a phone that will actually fit in a pants pocket. It's sad and ironic that Palm doesn't recognize this, when their foundation product was the first practical pocket computer.

Re:What was the question?

Palm can't (or doesn't feel that it can) compete with Nokia et al in churning out low-end phones. Palm can only stay in business by making higher-end smartphones.

Their biggest problem is that their product cycle is way too long. The hardware and software revs between models seem small enough, but they're taking more than a year to push them out. That can't go on much longer.

Re:What was the question?

I said "small" not "low end". I'd kill for a clamshell or slider phone that runs Palm applications.

As for their product cycle, it hardly matters how long it is when nothing really new comes at the end of it.

Re:What was the question?

That's a mostly insightful rant, but it's only got a couple of sentences about the Foleo. And that's a weak point -- they're basically saying nobody will buy the Foleo if the Treo sucks. Which is kind of dumb, since the Foleo isn't that tightly bound to the Treo.

Out of the box, yes it was. To quote the spiel:
"Foleo mobile companions work with Palm's Treo(TM) smartphones (Palm OS(R) and Windows Mobile(R) versions). However, Palm believes that most smartphones based on Windows Mobile should work with little or no modification. Smartphones based on operating systems from Research in Motion, Apple, and Symbian likely can be supported with a modest software effort."

That "little modification" and "modest software effort" would be beyond the average businessman. And, of course, their phones would have to support BlueTooth and not have BlueTooth crippled by their provider before even trying to get it to work... So in reality, we're back to a potential buyer group of Treo users, plus a handful of diehards and rich people who can afford to say "aw, shucks, doesn't work, in the basement you go".

What's flabbergasting is that it took so long before Palm killed off Fooleo. Almost all user groups predicted it would either be killed, or drag Palm down with it, and I have seen absolutely no support for Hawking's view that this was the best invention ever to come out of Palm. It was so blindingly obvious to everyone that this was a solution looking for a problem, and a bad one at that. When you can get full laptops for around $350, why would you want to spend $600 (less $100 initial mail in rebate, for those who qualified) for an ultra-slow laptop-looking device that can only do a small fraction of the things a laptop can do? And if small is your thing, the Foleo wasn't particularly small either -- bigger footprint than the new (and much cheaper) Asus models, but with a smaller screen and incredibly enough even less memory and slower CPU.

No, this was doomed from the start, and in this case, people are in their full right to tell Palm "we told you so". Because we did -- and not just a few of us either.

And, as Engadget said, "Small is sexy". Remember that, Palm. And remember how well the Palm V/Vx sold. It was small and sexy, and we luurved it! The replacements were clunkier and/or less sexy, and we didn't go for those. Simplicity and beauty in a small form factor is what you sold, and then forgot all about. The buyers didn't -- YOU did. There may still be time to do something, but the sand is running out as fast as the pennies on your budget, and you don't have much time left.

Regards,
--
*Art

Re:What was the question?

> The big question with the Treo is whether there are enough people who need more than a PDA but less than a full laptop

No, the smartphone IS the new notebook. The notebook is the new desktop. The desktop is the new workstation. The Treo is just way behind the curve because it still doesn't have a Unix OS and Web 2.0 browser or a UI that works on a tiny screen. It was supposed to start being a real computer about 2-3 years ago.

Why buy a Core 2 Duo in a big white box when you can have it in a MacBook for $1100? Very few reasons.

Once you have an iPhone (or similar future competitor with Unix and Web 2.0 and zooming UI) you look at a PC, even a notebook, as a workstation. You use it to run Photoshop, you use it to make stuff, but you don't take it everywhere with you, you don't open it up to do email when you're on the road, you don't open it up to look up something in Google or get a map or refer to some notes. You only get the notebook out to do a real computing session, like an hour or more of real work.

Makes sense on a dozen levels

There's a new, weird surge of mini devices coming. Palm's entry was kinda neat but really failed to live up to some of the promises of the other devices coming out.

It's sensible; they're waiting to see how hard the Eee fails in this arena before they try to launch. They'll either compete directly with the Eee and the others or they'll learn from the failures of the Eee and we'll see an even neater (can I say that, neatER?) device from Palm.

I still love my Sony Clie, and I wish Palm the best, I'd really like to see a new Palm device that had a fair chance at rekindling the good old days of the Palm Pilot.

PS. I'm not damning the Eee pre-maturely, I'd love to see it flourish as well but I'm not holding my breath. Every time Asus raises the price a hair every tech forum goon places bets on it's death. What makes me think they may be right is that these cheapskates are it's primary market. If they aren't willing to buy it at $300 or even $400, they probably never would have seriously purchased it at $260 or whatever the limbo stick was at.

Not if but when?

From the summary:

Palm hasn't ruled out a 'Foleo II' at some point

FTFA:

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.

Erm ...

... it's called "saving face".

Unless I'm very much mistaken, there will never be a Foleo II. The press release is merely a cover for the fact that the product concept was DOA. Nobody was interested in the Foleo apart from a few geeks who wanted a cheap sub-notebook that ran linux. For business users there just wasn't a market for that thing and there most likely never will be.

Even die-hard Palm fans hated it, renaming it the Flopeo or Fooleo. Palm seriously screwed up with this one, but at least they had the courage to axe it before making complete fooleos of themselves ...

SURPRISED?

That a 500$ non-x86 glorified PDA in a UMPC form factor and lacking wireless capabilities would not sell in 2007, when Asus intends to push an XP-capable PentiumM-based EeePC that will harness the Windows application base for 200$-300$?

When two weeks after its announcement, VIA showed a reference C7-based UMPC (reworked nano-itx rig with a screen, really)?

GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK. I'd be surprised if palm managed to sell more than four of these units. Whoever made the call to do this product is a clueless idiot, and the engineers working for him are clueless idiots for not having pointed just how pathetically backward such a product would be in light of existing competition. It wouldn't have sold a decade ago. NOW?

1999 called. They want their Jornada back.

too little, too late

Well, the Foleo compares UNfavorably to my 10-year-old Toshiba Portege; it's also only slightly smaller than my current notebook computer. So I'd rather carry a full computer around; specially if it's the same weight-wise.

Palm decided to throw all their weight and resources behind the Treo line, and thus rendered themselves irrelevant in the PDA business, leaving a lot of users without any clear upgrade path (my T3 starts to show its age and it lacks all sorts of connectivity). Also they have slept in their laurels and have a last-century operating system that's hopelessly out of league with any other smartphone or PDA device out there. I have zero faith in them now, and while I'll be in the market for a smartphone in the next couple of years, it sure as hell will not be a Palm device; while I hope my T3 survives that long, should it fail, I'll just stop using a PDA altogether, Palm's current offerings really are *that* bad and Foleo was only an indication that they're not about to improve.

Re:

Resources behind the Treo line? The Treo 600 was a brilliant product in its day, but all they've done in the 7 years or so since is basically bugfix and do new plastic moldings. And come out with a line of me-too Windows Mobile devices.

If that's all the

They withdrew it because...

...it was an answer to a question that nobody asked. Unless the question was "WTF?"

Light at the end of the tunnel

Hallelujah. I've all but given up hope that my Palm TX would not be the last of it's breed. I watched Hawkins debut the Foleo live and I felt a twisting in my stomach, sincerely fearing that Palm was committing suicide in a spectacularly dull fashion. There is not a market for the Foleo and there never was. This might be a sign that Palm execs have finally started to understand that 1997 is gone and will never return. I'm looking forward to the next rev of the Palm OS (read: brutal murder of Garnet). I'm looking forward to a device that has Skype built in and finally has an OS that doesn't crash, plays multimedia, has a decent browser and above all is a PDA not a phone. I hope that this is a sign and I wish Palm the best!

What I want from Palm

Palm should return to what they knew how to do well once upon a time. Build insanely great personal organizers. It isn't the 1990's anymore and it doesn't HAVE to be a cellphone, we have bluetooth now. Bundling a PDA with a cellphone sounds like a great idea, but it isn't. They operate on two totally different replacement cycles, cellphones (in the US) are tied to the carrier, requiring you to buy from the subset of products your carrier decides to carry. Cell phones have the WRONG FORM FACTOR. Jeff, go back to your blocks of wood and realize the problem and maybe a solution.

Once you make that jump, something like the Folio is at least possible to think about. A big PDA for the DayRunner set that links via Bluetooth or WiFi and offers a stable platform for the road warrier who doesn't need to worry about problems with Windows and can live with a mostly browser based existence except for the vital PDA data and vertical apps kept locally.

And personally I wouldn't trade month long battery runtimes for 'multimedia clips.' A big Folio sized gadget should do it because it needs a Li-Ion battery and a daily charge anyway, but offer at least one handheld that ISN'T an iPod wannabee. These days you could sell a totally kick ass "Palm" for under a hundred dollars. There is a whole untapped market there just waiting.

How many devices do you want to drag around?

I'll agree that I don't get the trend towards making a fcsking iPod (errm, music player) out of every bit of electronics, but I do appreciate the phone/PDA hybrid and appreciate the fact I don't need two devices.

I also appreciate the massive overlap -- a P

Re:How many devices do you want to drag around?

What we really need is a CF-card sized "phone module" we can move between various devices...

Well, if North America had standardised on GSM, the answer would be simple: a SIM chip.

But, that's another argument for another time.

What I'd like too see...

1. Google (or someone else nice) wins spectrum auction, and provides an open wireless based server platform. Such that someone can write a service application and can host it themselves, or have it be hosted by Google so it executes in the datacenter nearest the client, using a simple server-side API.

2. Palm provides a open wireless client platform, with a simple API, the ability to run Java and/or .NET/Mono programs that are wireless 'aware' (Battery life, intermittent connection, small screen size, GPS, etc.)

3. that 1 and 2 work together...

Getting web pages on a mobile device is nice, but I want to be able to not only create my own applications, but servers as well. You might be able to unlock an iPhone to work with another service, but do other services work with the iPhone?

Custom traffic maps rendered from traffic sensor data; traffic sensors which themselves could use the wireless... which then notifies you based on your current location, that if you don't leave in 10 minutes, you'll be late for an appointment.

Someone tells you about a cool new show, so you browse TV schedules, then set your DVR to record it remotely... then trickle it to your handheld in the background and watch it.

You can do a lot of that with existing web-server based tools, but sometimes a custom application that's aware of the mobile hardware could be amazingly useful, particularly if it needs to respond to 'events', not just while the page is loaded.

Nokia N800

Who cares. I'm loving my Linux-based Nokia N800.

Bwahahahaha!

As I wrote here when they announced it:

It seems that almost all gadgets introduced as being a "new class" of device can be found a year later being sold by the pallet-load at bay area surplus and auction places. A year from now we can go in together on a lot of 100 of them for $1 each :)

The only question now is whether they show up at Weird Stuff Warehouse or BDI :-)

Seriously, this might be the most embarrassing product announcement I've ever seen.

G.

My Nokia N800 replaced my Palm PDAs

The Palm OS was EXCELLENT, for a PDA. The hardware SUCKS. I'm writing apps for my nice little Debian-based Linux portable, AKA my Nokia N800, to replace it.

I have gone through quite a few Palm PDAs, including a Palm III, a Palm V, 2 Palm Vx units, a Palm m505, a Zire 22, and 4 Tungsten T|X units. I had 4 T|Xs because the screen digitizer kept failing, so Palm kept having to replace it under warranty. The glue holding the V/Vx cases kept failing, and the motherboard died on one Vx. I got tired of every single device having a different proprietary cradle and charger. I got tired of the previous generation being totally orphaned so that you could no longer find accessories or get repairs. I also got tired of buying hardcases which then disintegrated when the glue failed. Each generation had less battery lifetime, so that I started out with two weeks between charges on my Palm III and finished where I had better not forget to charge my T|X every single night. I love the operating system and user interface, but the hardware is a dismal failure.

Finally my last T|X started rebooting every time I tried to use the wi-fi. That was the last straw. I managed to get one last backup out of it.

The problem is that the Palm to-do list and calendar runs my life and rules my world. I bought an app called PocketMoney and made it a habit to immediately record groceries, gas, lunch, etc. in it, and it has literally kept me from making debit card overdrafts since 2002, when I used to make 3 or 4 a month. Washington Mutual's stock went down when I bought a Palm. I keep all my passwords in there. I write stuff down that I do only once a year and which takes 3 days to rediscover, so that when I go "how do I do..." I can look it up on my PDA. I use HanDbase to track the contents of my parts boxes, tool boxes, and book collection, and to remind me of local restaurants. I use Jpilot and I wrote my own daemon to do wi-fi hotsyncing on Linux so I can easily back it up every day with one button press. It plays a big part in keeping my daily life on track.

So I had to find a replacement. I use Linux so a WinCE/Mobile Windows unit was right out, because it's impossible to sync the data and back it up on anything but a Windows machine. I drooled over the Nokia 770 "internet tablet" for ages, but it didn't seem "programmable" or developer-friendly, and I had no idea what an "internet tablet" was supposed to do for you. Finally the Nokia 800 came out and I discovered you could run Python on it so I bought one. It turns out that you can easily write nice user interfaces with pyGTK if you take a little care to respect the limits of the CPU.

One other nice thing I discovered is that the built-in Opera browser is capable of handling my bank's website, the RoadRunner webmail page, and the Oracle Collabsuite email system at work. The Palm T|X web browser failed with all of these.

For me, my N800 is my "very tiny Linux laptop that fits in my pocket" and goes with me on my motorcycle and other places where I wouldn't carry a regular laptop.

Palm lost the plot years ago.

Palm's problem is that they lost the plot years ago. The original Palm OS design allowed for all kinds of cool capabilities that require far greater resources in a more general purpose OS... consider that palm's search function gave you the same kind of capabilities as a modern "desktop search" program... on an 8 MHz 68000!

Instead of building on their strengths they panicked and let Microsoft move the goalposts, then went "wait a second, PalmOS isn't a multitasking laptop replacement, we gotta replace it or we're h0sed!" and ran off in every direction at once to try and replace something that didn't need replacing.

They should have continued to develop the Palm OS 4 platform and follow the Dragonball down to cheaper and cheaper hardware, ensuring a continual influx of new customers who bought a $100... $80... $50... $30... entry-level Palm instead of a $200 Pocket PC because, well, that's what the mass market can afford. They owned that market, and gave it up.

If they'd done that they wouldn't be trying to come up with a way to get people to buy into their latest high margin gimmick.