If the sudden rush into subnotebooks by major PC vendors is any indication, it's worth considering whether Palm's Foleo wasn't such a lame idea.
Photos of a subnotebook from Hewlett-Packard, reportedly called the HP Compaq 2133, showed up on the Web recently. And another major PC vendor, Acer, is also rumored to be entering the subnotebook fray sometime soon. Neither company will confirm anything, but in the case of the HP Compaq device, an industry insider tells us the product is for real and that the company began seriously looking into the category in November 2007. When the device will come to market, however, is still a question mark.
Palm founder Jeff Hawkins (right) shows The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg the Foleo.
(Credit: CNET Networks)But there's likely to be even more news on this front in the next few months. So what's the genesis of the sudden interest in this category? It's easy to point to the Eee PC from Asus and its surprising and instant popularity. But the Eee wasn't the first to employ the broader concept of a mobile Web device that looked like a notebook PC, but was meant to function more as a secondary device. That was the idea brought to us by Palm founder Jeff Hawkins with the Foleo.
Hawkins, who invented the Palm Pilot and the Treo, insisted the Foleo was "the best idea he'd ever had." The product was roundly panned by critics and eventually dumped before it even came to market late last summer.
The idea of a small form factor computer that is tinier than a notebook with solid-state memory, running a light operating system, Web access for e-mail is being tweaked and advanced by some of the biggest names in computing.
It's happening despite the fact that it's still a vastly unproven category of computing, and previous attempts to define such a middling type of device (see: UMPC, MID) have largely failed. So what's different?
The attraction to devices like the Eee PC, and the XO from OLPC, is partly form factor, but mostly price. At $399 for the Eee and $400 for the XO (that gets one for you and one for a kid in a developing country), they're not necessarily functional as fully loaded primary PCs, but at those prices, you're not going to expect it to be. More importantly though, at that price it severely undercuts notebook PC leaders HP, Acer, Dell, and Lenovo.
Not coincidentally, the impetus for HP's experimentation in this category was its concern over the very low price tag Asus was able to stick on the Eee PC. Selling the mini-notebook at $399, even if it's a secondary PC and runs Linux, gives it a serious chance to further chip away at the already-declining average selling prices for notebook PCs. (The 2133 from HP will have an entry level model priced at $499, and will have a Via processor, we're told.)
But that kind of pricing also could represent a good opportunity for the HPs and Acers of the world. This type of subnotebook is aimed at a very narrow group of users, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, according to Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis for The NPD Group.
The pricing shows "it's not focused on being people's primary computer," he said. "Like the MacBook Air, like the Eee, like the Foleo was going to be. We tend to think of them in the context of other notebooks or portable devices, but they're really not designed to be a primary portable device. It's designed to be a niche product that focuses on a very specific usage model."
But what is that usage model? There's not even an agreed upon term for this category. Subnotebook? UMPC? Super mobile Internet device? Or as Intel is apparently ready to call it, Netbook? That definition is important to the consumer. The lack of clarity as to the purpose of the Foleo was a major reason it didn't strike a chord with a lot of consumers.
"The tough part is, this type of product is trying to navigate narrow space between a notebook and a smartphone. It can't compete with a smartphone in terms of price and portability, but it can outperform a smartphone," said IDC analyst Richard Shim. "But at the opposite end of the spectrum, these OEMs don't want to compete with notebooks directly because they don't want to disrupt the growth engine and significantly (hasten) the decline in ASPs."
So was the Foleo as silly as Hawkins' harshest critics said? Maybe the execution and timing was off. Or more likely, he was on to something, but wasn't quite able to take the idea to the next logical conclusion. In fairness to him, he did recognize at the time that the Foleo's utility may not have been as obvious to the mass consumer as he'd hoped.
"The further out you are, the more people have trouble understanding. It's hard to go back in time, but when we did the Pilot, there were a lot of people that thought that was a stupid idea. I mean a lot," he told CNET News.com last year.
Maybe he'll be vindicated--at least partially--on this one too.
Palm
(Credit: Palm)Mark your calendars, my friends. On September 12, Palm will be making an announcement about a "new device" from their friends "across the pond." Eh? Well, we certainly know it's not going to be the Foleo. According to Palm employee Stephanie Richardson's blog, the news won't be about the Palm Centro smart phone, either. So what oh what could it be? Do you guys have any ideas? Or what would you like to see from Palm?
Give this to the folks running Palm: At least management had enough insight to realize the company was about to commit one of the biggest blunders in recent tech history.
(Credit:
Palm)
Palm late Tuesday announced its decision to cancel its Foleo mobile companion only four months after its co-founder, superstar developer Jeff Hawkins, gave the product's first public demonstration at the D5 conference. A $500 mobile companion for e-mail was going to be an impossible sell, so maybe this is a good contrarian sign to Palm investors that the company isn't as brain-dead as some of its harsher critics suggest.
Of course, you would never guess this was anything less than a bold and brave strategy move after reading the talkback postings on the Palm blog announcing the Foleo cancellation. The gist of the comments: Gee you're brilliant. What insight. And you smell like fresh lavender.
When you consider the flame wars that regularly attend even minor technology events, what's to explain this singular lack of passion? Maybe someone was sharing a big post-Labor Day mix of acid-spiked Kool-Aid. For the record, a PR spokeswoman told me Palm doesn't edit out negative comments.
So it goes. But why mince words? The Foleo very well may go down in history as this generation's equivalent of Microsoft Bob, another ill-considered flop that so traumatized its chief product manager that she decided to quit the business and marry Bill Gates.
Of course, the chief distinction here is that Microsoft's reputation wasn't riding on Bob.
As for Hawkins, who signed up for the thankless task of convincing the digerati that the Foleo would usher in a new product category, what does he think about all this? (Jeff, you've got my e-mail if you want to dish.) Considering all that's happened, it's safe to assume he wishes he could retract his quote that the Foleo was the best idea he ever had.
- prev
- 1
- next
