Tiernan Ray writes for Barron’s website today that Palm may have pushed back the release date of the Foleo to late September to early October. The Barron’s article cites Deutsche Bank’s Jonathan Goldberg who wrote, “In a round of checks yesterday we learned that the Palm Foleo will be delayed” in a briefing released today. Mr. Goldberg’s briefing continues:
“The product was supposed to hit Palm stores this week, but was delayed when software bugs were detected. These apparently included an inability to synchronize the Foleo with most models of the Treo, in particular the nominally high-volume Treo 680. Our contacts indicate Palm now expects the device will ship in late September/early October.”
This is surely some sad news for my fellow Foleo Fanatics who are waiting for this device to become available, however, I would rather seem Palm work out all the kinks before the device ships. If that means that software on the Foleo or the various Treo smartphones needs to be fixed, I would rather Palm fix it and have a solid launch than ship a product that isn’t complete.
Read Barron’s Tech Trader Daily article…
[Thanks to everyone who emailed me about this report.]
4 Comments
Prog Max
I’d gladly forgo the syncing with smart phones. I’m not sure why they are emphasizing this feature. I stopped wanting a sandwich sized phone with the Tungsten W and went back to a small phone and TX. I now want to swap the TX for the Foleo and DUN via a BT connection. Small phone, but a big screen PDA when you need it, without the 2 minutes boot time. I’ll pay for that.
Alan Grassia, Staff Writer
I think that it might have something to do with who Palm was expecting the target market to be. I can understand that Palm wanted to take it slowly with a limited target market (corporate customers) but there are a number of other people who see the Foleo for what it really is, an ultra-mobile Linux notebook.While Palm is trying to build a new developer community around this device, they need to make sure that the hardware, software, and Treo smartphones all work very well with the device out of the gate. And so, now we learn that some aspect of the software (we don’t know if the problem is with software on the Foleo or on the Treo) is not going well. I still would rather Palm release a solid product than a buggy one that they have to continually have patch for the firs 6-9 months after the launch.I just want Palm to roll the Foleo out with as little problems as possible.
Vance
Right on, Alan. This is an ultra-mobile, instant-on laptop. The smartphone companion angle is seriously flawed, in my opinion. It’s one small part of an already small market. But the laptop alternative line could really draw in the mainstream.
Alan Grassia, Staff Writer
I can just see the hackers (programmers, not the bad guys) having a field day with this thing.As I stated before, I would really like to see a VNC client for Foleo. That would make a bunch of IT folks, myself included, very happy.Alan G