I can understand all the skepticism about PalmOne after the embarrassing lack of impressive devices recently, other than the Treo650 which seems to consistently get good reviews despite its hefty price tag.
But I'm still optimistic and think this is an exciting development. File management was a weakness in Palm devices, and it sounds like they want to strengthen that. They are acknowledging that they want to continue to serve the high end customer (me!) with a whole new line, which is spectacular news because I was concerned that they were going to slide into just doing smartphones and budget models. Not only are they going to continue Tungsten business line pdas, but will have this new line which will suppport users of DocsToGo
Quote:
|
The introduction of a new category reflects usage patterns palmOne has tracked over time, especially among customers for its premium products. Customers of palmOne's high-end Tungsten(TM) T3 handheld computer, for example, show a strong affinity for taking full advantage of the included DataViz(R) Documents To Go(R) software, which puts Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents at their fingertips. Customers also have asked palmOne to provide them with convenient ways to carry, file and manage rich digital content, such as music and video.
|
We may not find a whole lot of innovation from them yet, but this is still great news as far as I'm concerned.
I think continuing to produce the more powerful pdas is also a good idea for Palm because it lets them perfect some of the newer technologies in the easier-to-implement pda category before they put it in smartphones.
And best of all, if they are going after these sorts of customers like the Word/Excel/Powerpoint users, aren't we all the more likely to see a clamshell device with a keyboard? I'm hoping...
The month of May is going to be very, very interesting with PalmOne's product announcements and Microsoft's Windows Mobile 2005 release!