Palm cancels first-generation Foleo

Faced with biting criticism of the Foleo, a Linux-based psuedo-laptop gadget, Palm has decided to cancel the first generation of the device.

Palm CEO Ed Colligan broke the news on Palm's official blog Tuesday after the close of the stock market. Just last week, a financial analyst predicted that Palm would have to delay the Foleo's launch until September or October because of serious software-related bugs, but Colligan decided to kill the entire project instead.

Palm says it's canceling the launch of the Foleo, but it will release a second version some day.

(Credit: Palm)

"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," Colligan wrote on Palm's blog. Calls to Palm representatives were not immediately returned.

Palm unveiled the Foleo at the D: All Things Digital conference in May to widespread skepticism, despite the fact that Palm founder Jeff Hawkins considered it "the best idea I've ever had." The Foleo is basically an underpowered laptop that's designed to give Treo users a break from typing e-mails on a small phone keyboard. However, few could figure out why smart phone users--who ostensibly own a laptop already--would want to buy a separate $499 device that could do little more than send e-mails.

Colligan said that Palm is still working on Foleo II in conjunction with Hawkins. But Palm has to focus on updating the Treo and getting the newest version of Palm OS--now based on Linux--to market before tackling a new category like the Foleo. Palm will take a $10 million charge associated with the cancellation of the product, he wrote.

[drumpat01]

Hahaha

Oh Palm, remember when you were cutting edge and relevant?

[sbwinn]

It's sad when. . .

It is sad when the best news you've hear from a company (in a long <br />time) is that they are canceling their latest product. The Foleo was <br />such a non-starter it is amazing that it ever got as far as it did. <br />Now that they've managed to crawl out from under that steaming <br />pile of failure maybe they can get on with trying to make the <br />company relevant again.

[markhahn]

still makes sense

sometimes integration makes sense, sometimes specialization. if you mainly do fairly short, textual emails, perhaps the existing smartphones are good enough for you. along with the phone integration (and therefore small screen, kbd), you're also normally forced to use or at least pay for the integrated services.<br /><br />suppose a blackberry doesn't suit you well - don't like the physical device, want more pixels, don't like the services, etc. you might well prefer a pure-voice phone that happens to have a bluetooth link to a device like a foleo (more usable screen, keyboard, OS, etc). telco's probably don't like this model as much because users would demand to buy just the pieces they need: don't give me any mail services, just forward my packets with decent latency and price. integration breeds lock-in, which is good for some customers and bad for others, but always good for all providers...<br /><br />I hope palm makes the prototype foleos available somewhere for cheap. I'd like to try one.

[appledogx--2008]

Thank God!!!

It was already dead before they killed it.<br /><br />Now maybe somebody at Palm will wake up and bring an <br />innovative, interesting PDA to market again. Palm has been <br />recycling the same old thing for years. I still like and use my old <br />Palm, but unless we get something with real Mac support and <br />better apps, Palm will be palming the dirt.

[remarquee]

Thank God!!!

Is Palm just plain stupid? What in the world were they thinking? Why in the world would anyone want such a useless toy? You can purchase a "real" laptop for the same price which offers infinitely more.<br /><br />Palm has for the last five years squandered its resources. Is this what top management receive the big bucks for?<br /><br />Move out of the way and let someone with vision in.<br /><br />Remarquee

[thriftyT]

good move.

Palm was in a bad situation with the g1 Foleo. At least they didn't <br />make the situation worse by releasing this..

[Fouffy]

What a surprise!!

Even a 5 year old could have predicted this!

[rbiz]

Too Little Too Late

That pretty much sums up Palms place in the market. Clearly this <br />company shoulda woulda could've been the leaders in palm <br />computing - but no.<br /><br />Palm is toast.

[Ngallendou]

Had they built the phone into the Foleo...

... I would have order a dozen of them.

[StargateFan]

They Better Get Their Act Together...

At palm. Frankly they shoudl get rid of the entire PDA lineup, the market is dead. Instead they should focus on just producing Smartphones, they are the future of handheld communication for now at least. <br /><br />Secondly they should be moving quickly. Microsoft's position in the Mobile Phone Marketplace is going to expand. There are rumors circulating that Microsoft is poised to take over RIM, the company that makes the Blackberry. Microsoft is not only the competition palm could face, Apple will gain continue to gain momentum with the iPhone. It might take a few generations for the iPhone to truly be business savy, but in some area's it will move into the enterprise market.

[EBChasSC]

HP Jornada 820 ???????????

When I saw the picture it reminded me of ... no ... I thought it was ... my HP Jornada 820. This was briefly ... no ... still is a great little handheld computer ... for its time,1997. And it held the promise of great functionality with its array of expansion ports only possible in a unit of its size. But, it died a writhing death because Microsoft and HP wouldn't promote, encourage, or support its potential for expansion and function. The Foleo was going to be offered at nearly half the cost of the 820. I don't know about its functionality but it had a niche then and could now. I've just read that the major computer manufacturers are finally offering "gaming" computers. These computers are designed with the enhanced functionality that is necessary for "gaming", but also finally have the one thing that is required by gamers ... the ability to upgrade and expand ... whether it be OS, CPU, video, audio, memory,functionality, etc. THAT is what gamers have been looking for and demanding. And statistics are showing that more and more people are using their computers for that purpose. Do that with your smartphone.If HP had been committed to the 820 in 1997, it would still be functional and productive today. If Palm would do that with the Foleo, they would have a product people could use in 2020. And that's not a bad idea. The added benefit is that our landfills, and my closets, would have a lot less strain put on them. We need products that can be adapted for the future, not simply replaced. This country ought to be able to make something other than the B-52 bomber that can be functional for 50 years ... or at least 10. Obsolescence by design needs to become a thing of the past.An expandable, upgradable laptop the size of a book is not a bad idea. Another HP 820 is.

[cesdewar]

A fine company that lost its focus

Losing focus is very damaging. Better to walk in ANY direction than try and walk in all directions at once.<br /><br />The puzzling thing is that Palm users are constantly telling Palm what to do and Palm constantly ignores it. I am really waiting to see if Palm's new handhelds to be released this fall will provide yet another generation of devices that don't support Wi-Fi. What Palm needs to do is simple and obvious - a robust Linux-based device with PACE to support all existing Palm applications and a good development environment for writing native Linux apps so the huge third party developer base will kickstart the new platform with a wealth of new and "prettier" looking apps - the Palm OS's 1980's vintage base GUI is showing its age badly. Supposedly this is on the way(?), but it's not a simple task from a technical point of view, and Palm must realize they need to devote ALL their technical resources to this goal - kissing off PalmSource (now part of Access) which was working on the identical goal was a dubious idea, but then diluting their internal resources with other projects was just asking for disaster.<br /><br />The Foleo was not a horrible idea - perhaps just the wrong bad implementation - it could have been just an inexpensive piece of software that runs on a regular PC laptop/desktop and connects via Wi-Fi to a handheld - there is little reason for this to be a physical device when the vast majority of potential purchasers would be people who already have a notebook computer.<br /><br />A Linux-based device would be far more attractive to the Corporate IT departments that have never really liked the Palm OS that much, but do have a positive attitude towards Linux, thus providing a better avenue of competition against Microsoft in that area.<br /><br />Someone needs to get Palm to march to a single drummer...