In a Palm company blog post earlier today, CEO Ed Colligan announced to Palm’s customers, partners, and developers that the Foleo mobile companion project was being canceled. Mr. Colligan writes:
“As many of you are aware, we are in the process of building our next generation software platform. We are very excited about how this is coming together. It has a modern flexible UI, instant performance, and an incredibly simple and elegant development environment. We are working hard on this platform and on the first smartphone that will take advantage of it.
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. We will, of course, continue to develop products in partnership with Microsoft on the Windows Mobile platform, but from our internal platform development perspective, we will focus on only one.”
While this decision is hard to accept, especially here at Foleo Fanatics, I can understand Palm’s decision to move forward and put all of the company’s available resources into developing “Palm OS II” and the new smartphone hardware that it will run on.
Later this week, I plan on addressing this issue in my weekly 1SRC.com podcast. I will post more details as they become available.
Foleo Fanatics – Moving Forward
Foleo Fanatics was launched earlier this year to cover the Foleo Mobile Companion product and the smart devices that would have worked with it. Since the introduction of the Foleo this past May, Foleo Fanatics has enjoyed a fair amount of traffic from Palm enthusiasts around the world. Because of the community we have built around this site, I intend to continue to bring you the news and analysis from the Palm community, including the upcoming Centro smart device, “Palm OS II”, and Palm’s future developments around future plans for the “Foleo II” project.
I would like to thank all of my readers who have been visiting Foleo Fanatics over the last few months and look forward to continuing to provide you with your Palm community news.
Alan Grassia
Editor, Foleo Fanatics
14 Comments
Anonymous
one word: iphone
Alan Grassia, Staff Writer
I don’t believe that the iPhone directly impacted the decision to cancel the Foleo.I do believe that it is more important for Palm to bring out “Palm OS II” and future smart devices with much better quality control and a broader feature set than today’s Treos and handheld devices.Alan G
Anonymous
Honestly, I think you can say just about every significant change in the mobile industry in the next 12 months will be somehow related to the impact of the iPhone. Today it was announced that the iPhone (which came out of practically nowhere) sold more than any other smart phone during July.
MacDork
Glad to see that someone at Palm actually realized that this was a device looking for a solution before actually trying to sell these things.
Anonymous
The “Foleo” was a POS to begin with, even though it hadn’t shipped yet. I agree with the “iPhone” comment. When they announced the iPhone, everyone at Palm Inc. looked at each other and crapped their pants in unison …. hence this cancellation.The iPhone maked my Treo 700p look like a silly children’s toy (and even children couldn’t use it).Start your photocopiers!
Jodi Hansen
I am dissappointed in the sense that I would love a Foleo now, but I can see how much improved it could be to have Palm OS II. There is still an exciting future for the Foleo, just not now. They are right, it would be best for the new phones with Palm OS II to be released first.Thanks for all of your effort in bringing us the latest news Alan. Please keep Foleo Fanatics alive in the hope that Foleo II comes soon.
Alan Grassia, Staff Writer
Jodi, Thanks for your comments. If Palm is really moving most (all?) of their hardware and software engineers to the Palm OS II project and we get a stable, quality Linux-based operating system, I’d be OK with Palm pulling the plug on Foleo I. As I discussed in a recent 1SRC.com editorial, interoperability between Palm’s smart devices (I don’t believe that the Centro will be part of the Treo family) and the Foleo would be an awesome combo and key to Palm’s continued growth.And I will continue to keep this site going as long as the Palm community continues to visit.Alan G
Anonymous
I loved Palm, owned several of their handhelds, and even owned their company stock several years ago. But let’s face it, this company and it’s products are so “5+ years ago” that it’s not even funny. It’s sad, but Palm has become such a relic that I moved on a while ago now, and it appears that most of their other customers from those halcyon years at the turn of the century have as well.
Alan Grassia, Staff Writer
I’ve disabled anonymous posting. If you want to post your criticisms then you’ll need to be big enough to use your real name.Alan G
Anonymous
The “Foleo” was a POS to begin with, even though it hadn’t shipped yet. I agree with the “iPhone” comment. When they announced the iPhone, everyone at Palm Inc. looked at each other and crapped their pants in unison …. hence this cancellation.The iPhone made my Treo 700p look like a silly children’s toy (and even children couldn’t use it).Cancelling the Foleo means one less crappy device to hear about.Thanks for listening … again.
MacDork
Anonymous or not, it’s been painfully obvious to people that Palm have been out of touch w/ what consumers have wanted for a long, long time, and their sales have reflected it. After having used a Treo 650 for a year, I couldn’t believe it was still being sold. Back in the Pilot days, Palm was innovative in it’s simplicity and rock-solid syncing where it’s competitors (Newton) were over-priced and arguably too complex for the then infantile marketplace.The “upgrade” to Windows Mobile was laughable, as well. It felt like progress to most Treo users because it was new, but now that the handheld market’s radically different, the Foleo stands out as laughably out-classed.Kudos to you for keeping the site running, but even w/ a Linux-based handheld in the works, Palm’s time has passed, and I’m tired of holding out hope for them to get their act together.
Anonymous
Yes, very respectful Kudos and I hope the site goes well…
Jodi Hansen
You are right Alan. I see development of Palm OS II as being the most important and to have that on the Foleo too would make the communication between Foleo and future devices easier for developers. Not to mention the fact that there would be only one SDK. I am a developer (not for Palm) and was considering developing for Foleo. I will wait for Palm OS II.
Dwight
If Palm was really that close to releasing the Foleo, a lot of units have already been made and are sitting in storage somewhere. Perhaps the Foleo 2 will just involve putting new software in the Foleo 1? The wait might not be so long…