Palm has made key moves in the past couple of
weeks, releasing a new complement to its Treo smartphones while
also avoiding acquisition by giving up a 25% stake to a private
equity firm.First among the key announcements was Palm's introduction of the
Foleo, a laptop-style clamshell device that connects to a Treo via
Bluetooth for one-button email syncing. The Foleo, according to
Palm, offers email junkies a bigger form factor to view messages
and edit documents. It features a 10.2-inch screen, full keyboard,
instant turn-on and about five hours of battery life.
But many mobility experts say the Foleo is destined to flop,
with Jack Gold, principal and founder of J.Gold Associates, a
Northborough, Mass.-based mobility and wireless research firm,
dubbing it the "Palm Folly-O."
"The whole point of having BlackBerrys, Treos and the like is to
have something small," Gold said, noting that the Foleo means extra
gear to lug around simply for mobile email, essentially defeating
the purpose of carrying a smaller form factor smartphone.
The Foleo is priced at about $600, or $500 after a $100 rebate,
which many mobility experts say is too pricey, especially when a
traditional laptop can be purchased for a similar or slightly
higher amount. Gold said that the Foleo, as a standalone, can surf
the Web through an Opera Browser over a Wi-Fi connection; it uses
Documents to Go to let users edit attachments received on Treo, and
it has a PDF viewer and a VGA output for presentations. It runs
Linux, offers 256 MB of memory with no hard drive, and has an SD
and CF slot along with a USB port for additional flash memory,
though it is still unclear whether that port can be used for a USB
hard drive.
Billed as a companion device for Treos, the Foleo syncs with
only Versamail and Pocket Outlook, instead of using Good Mobile
Messaging, which drove many users to a Treo in the first place,
Gold said.
Weighing in at two pounds, the Foleo may be too large and heavy
for users accustomed to carrying a smartphone, especially as a
peripheral device.
"Many users got a Treo or a
BlackBerry in the first place to not have to carry around
something that big," Gold said. "Will users be willing to carry
around a peripheral that is four to five times the size and weight
of their smartphone device?"
Todd Kort, principal analyst with Gartner Inc., didn't mince
words. "The Foleo is a dud and will soon be forgotten," he said,
adding that Palm's secrecy surrounding the Foleo and the hype it
generated make it notable, but most of that hype was created out of
expectations for a new hardware product.
But the Foleo, flop or not, may be the last such folly Palm
pulls out of its hat, especially since the company announced this
week that private equity firm Elevation Partners has acquired a 25%
share of Palm. Three of Elevation Partners' members, one of whom
had a strong hand in Apple's iPod success, will take roles in
guiding Palm's future.
Kort said the new lineup could "help Palm break out of the
catatonic spell that has engulfed their hardware engineering team.
They replace some dead wood on Palm's board of directors with some
people with fresh ideas and a strong track record of achievement.
Their timing is impeccable, following shortly after the
disappointing news of the Foleo last week."
Daniel Taylor, managing director for the Mobile Enterprise
Alliance, said, however, that one of the reasons the Foleo appears
to be a flop is the way Palm is positioning it. He said Foleo has
potential to be a home run, but Palm's marketing has made that
quite unclear.
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"When it takes a week for Palm loyalists to figure out what this
thing is and why they should buy one, then that's a problem,"
Taylor said.
He added that Palm would have benefited from positioning the
Foleo as a complement to all smartphones, supporting Treo,
BlackBerry and others.
"Sell a Foleo to every smartphone user on the market who wants a
small, ultra-portable laptop," he said. "That's the point of the
synchronisation with the smartphone. Foleo is designed to replace
the laptop for this exclusive group of mobile workers."
Taylor added that the Foleo doesn't need a smartphone to work
and said it can be paired with a Wi-Fi network or a 3G mobile
phone. Also, he said, the price point doesn't seem too high
considering that it offers benefits that everyone -- from mobile
workers to consumers -- wants.
"If we take the smartphone out of the equation, because that's
just one market for Foleo, we have other connectivity options that
include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth paired with a modem on a 3G mobile
phone," Taylor said. "We can just as easily use that 3G connection.
This is a boon for IT departments that are challenged to manage
product lifecycles, architectures, services and technologies that
include 3G services."
Rather than having a 3G radio on board, which is a common and
costly addition to laptops, the Foleo uses a mobile phone's radio,
making it a simple solution for use of a single device platform for
global deployments.
"From an enterprise standpoint, this makes Foleo instantly
deployable on a global basis," Taylor said.
For users, he said, Foleo becomes a useful suite of applications
including email, Web browser and the ability to view, manipulate
and save documents while also avoiding the bloat of a personal
computer.
Gold, while adamant that Palm should have focused its time and
money on creating a new Treo, said the Foleo will still find a few
users in the woodwork.
"While we believe some of these devices will sell as niche
products, or to the diehard Palm aficionados, we don't believe Palm
has come up with a product with large enough appeal to make it a
big seller, and certainly not to the level of pre-announcement hype
from Palm regarding this device," Gold wrote in a recent report.
"We don't believe they did their homework on this one. Palm
would've been better off investing its resources in an upgrade of
the venerable Treo to make it more competitive with the newer
generation smartphones from Nokia, RIM, Motorola, Apple, etc."