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September 5, 2007

Is it me or is everything faster over here?

In the olden days, Palm made a pretty good stab at a PDA with limited resources. Then they got big and found that they were launching more dogs than winners. Then came the Foleo: a product that didn't have to be put on the market for everyone to know that it was a dog. It was killed before even hitting the warehouses. At this rate, Palm is going to be killing off projects before anybody has thought of what to call them.

CEO Ed Colligan tried to pretend people were interested in having a crippled laptop with only slightly longer battery life:

"I would like to thank our customers for their interest in Foleo. I know there will be disappointed folks who were looking forward to carrying a Foleo for all their mobile computing needs."

Who were those people? Executives looking to trade up from an Etch-a-Sketch?

Colligan claimed the company has to focus on smartphones. That's all very well and good. The problem he has is that many of the improvements needed to make the Foleo at least semi-viable are still needed in the smartphone area. More than anything else, interoperability was the fundamental weakness of the Foleo plan; it will be the fundamental weakness for Palm's Treo unless the company gets a grip on what users actually want from its core products.

Posted by Chris at September 5, 2007 8:59 PM

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