Palm CEO Nixes Foleo ... For Now.

[NatCh]

Perhaps the Palm CEO has also been wondering who would buy a Foleo.


Thanks to MobileReader, Laurens for pointing this out to us.




From today's entry in The Official Palm Blog:

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.

Because we were nearly at the point for shipping Foleo, this was a very tough decision. Yet I am convinced this is the right thing to do. Foleo is based on second platform and a separate development environment, and we need to focus our efforts on one platform. Our own evaluation and early market feedback were telling us that we still have a number of improvements to make Foleo a world-class product, and we can not afford to make those improvements on a platform that is not central to our core focus. That would not be right for our customers or for our developer community.

Jeff Hawkins and I still believe that the market category defined by Foleo has enormous potential. When we do Foleo II it will be based on our new platform, and we think it will deliver on the promise of this new category. We're not going to speculate now on timing for a next Foleo, we just know we need to get our core platform and smartphones done first.

There's some discussion about how they believe that this is the best decision in the long run, and remarks on the $10 million dollar hit they'll take for doing it, for more details, follow the link.

So, what do y'all think? Is this a bad move or a good one?

[Oh, Why Not?]

Wow! As a Palm fan (pun intended) I thought it was a late April Fool's joke. So I can't sort it out right now.

[Leaping Gnome]

Good decision, no point throwing good money after bad.

[NatCh]

So you don't think anyone would have bought it, then, LG?

[Draccy]

I'm a huge palm pilot fan, but have left the company behind for more reliable, and greener pastures. Their decision to even market the folio in the first place left me baffled. Who needs a smart-phone-aide that costs nearly the same amount as a laptop that would do the same thing.

They need to go back to the drawing board and develop some stand-alone handhelds, or I'll never look their way again. Until that time, I'll migrate my smart phone to blackberry, and my reading to sony reader.

[hokie]

I think this is very smart in the long run, and am impressed that Palm actually listened to the simple but logical arguments from the critics and decided they had merit.

[LaughingVulcan]

Mixed decision: Given that they already sunk $10 million into it, I wonder how much more they would've had to go to give it a limited production run.

That said, their hype on smartphone integration was a definite limiter IMHO, and I'll bet they saw stiff competition coming from Asus as well.

While it's nice to cite that they want to get back to core Palm OS issues, I can't help but feel that actually doing that would be a step backwards for Palm.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by NatCh

So you don't think anyone would have bought it, then, LG?

Now that it no longer available, I want one. I wonder if they have any to sell for clearance?

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

Now that it no longer available, I want one. I wonder if they have any to sell for clearance?

Hmmm. A clever reverse-psychology marketing ploy, perhaps?

[mogui]

They have lost face big time. It took courage to kill this product after all the hype. But it is a good move for Palm. I, personally, would like to see them make a reader-sized device that runs all the Palm apps. Take that with a shaker of salt. I know zero about marketing.

[Woukie]

They were about to turn the corner. With a surge of activity they could have turned the tide and achieved success. They should not have withdrawn the device without first achieving success. By cutting and running and withdrawing the device, they only encourage the competition.
The CEO shouldn't have listened to the shareholders or the public. He should have only listened to officers with a vested interested in success who he had personally appointed to their position.
Any suggestion to withdraw the product should have exposed as a lack of loyalty for the company.
Its a sad day for America.

[Studio717]

I never could understand the "smartphone companion" angle - I just wanted one for writing. Since I switched from a Treo to an iPhone, I didn't need all the stuff they were touting, but I so wanted that instant-on, no hard drive, wifi-for-backup writing machine that it looked like it could be.

[mogui]

Originally Posted by Woukie

They were about to turn the corner. With a surge of activity they could have turned the tide and achieved success. They should not have withdrawn the device without first achieving success. By cutting and running and withdrawing the device, they only encourage the competition.
The CEO shouldn't have listened to the shareholders or the public. He should have only listened to officers with a vested interested in success who he had personally appointed to their position.
Any suggestion to withdraw the product should have exposed as a lack of loyalty for the company.
Its a sad day for America.

Wow! I think it was wise of them to heed the rumblings of their public. Who buys the stuff?

Originally Posted by Studio717

I never could understand the "smartphone companion" angle - I just wanted one for writing. Since I switched from a Treo to an iPhone, I didn't need all the stuff they were touting, but I so wanted that instant-on, no hard drive, wifi-for-backup writing machine that it looked like it could be.

Now you can buy the Asus EEE 701. It is nearly the same thing at half the price. And you don't have to fool with a mail-in rebate!

I seriously hope Palm succeeds. I have owned their devices for years, and will continue as long as they keep making them. Competing in the inexpensive laptop market is tough for a small company. Here in China you can buy a laptop for under US$400 and US$500 is common. We have to pay a lot of Value Added Tax which keeps our prices higher than in the west for technology products. So you can see that low-priced laptops are the wave of the future. Palm's offering didn't hit the sweet spot, and they realized it. Watch what happens in the next year or so. Asus is the first, but won't be the last.

[Studio717]

Originally Posted by mogui

...

Now you can buy the Asus EEE 701. It is nearly the same thing at half the price. And you don't have to fool with a mail-in rebate!
...

I will, of course, be looking at it, though judging by the constant price hikes, by the time it actually hits the market the price will probably be right where the Foleo was.

Like so many others here, I've had Palm devices for years and trusted their quality over an unknown (to me, at least).

I do have a Neo from Alphasmart and it is great for just plain writing, but I was hoping the Foleo would fill the gap between the Neo and the big laptop. Again, the Asus will get a close look.

I sure wish Palm would have at least given the Foleo a shot, though. I still think the market for it was much wider than the "smartphone companion" they were aiming for.

[Bob Russell]

Yep, I think they realized they couldn't sell it as-is. They also were probably in trouble with the new platform development. Put those things together, and they were willing to admit failure now rather than face failure and financial loss over time and delay the new platform. Trouble is that people already have lost faith in Palm's ability to produce products. Now that reputation is solidified, and not for the good.

Ironically, I do believe in the Foleo concept, as long as it includes an easy terminal mode for it to be used with the smart phone. Maybe that's part of why they delayed... Foleo might only really make sense once they can provide the value-added pieces together with their new OS smartphone platform and the integration features. Especially in the face of cheap UMPC competition.

Palm still, even after all this, is still in a position to succeed wildly. But the window of opportunity is closing, and they have to actually be able to produce the goods. We're all starting to doubt that they can.

Palm, I'm still hoping you pull all this off and succeed. But I'm not holding my breath.