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Palm CEO Ed Colligan has announced via blog that the Palm Foleo is dead. With Palm focusing on the next-generation Palm operating system and development platform (of which we hope to see the first signs here), the Foleo suddenly became outmoded as it was designed atop a different environment altogether.
I’m fairly unsurprised by the news, although for another reason entirely. When I tried out the Foleo on the LinuxWorld show floor last month, I couldn’t think anything other than, “Why would I want this?” Personally, I’d rather carry a laptop to type my longer notes or documents on than the device I tried out. In the form factor Palm delivered, the Foleo was only slightly smaller than my ultralight PC — and a lot less functional.
I suspect that such a feeling was pervasive in the Palm community, as the decision to yank a product on the brink of shipping means a $10 million dollar hit to Palm’s bottom line. Pulling a product because it doesn’t support another product that, to date, does not exist in the market, sounds like a lot of hot air. There are a lot of Palm devices out there right now that would work with the Foleo for the next several years, as I suspect that the existing hardware lines will likely not be upgradable to the next-generation Palm OS.
So it must be a lack of interest, right?
eWEEK’s own Jason Brooks would disagree, as he apparently had long awaited just such a device. Well, Jason can breath a little easier, as Colligan’s blog post hinted that there will eventually be a Foleo II (key word: eventually).
Me? I am not so sure we will ever see it.