Author: Nathan Willis
Palm CEO Ed Colligan announced the cancellation of the company’s Foleo mobile companion today in a post on the company’s official blog. Colligan cites the need to focus effort on Palm’s next-generation smartphone operating system as the reason behind the decision.
Palm announced the Foleo, a $600 sub-notebook running an embedded Linux OS in May of this year, but did not set a firm release date.
Similar in some respects to the $300 Asus Eee sub-notebook — even down to the Linux OS and solid-state storage — the Foleo was unique in one respect: it was designed to work primarily with Palm smartphones. Equipped with WiFi and Bluetooth, the Foleo would tether to a Palm Treo for email synchronization, but not to other manufacturers’ devices. Details of the Foleo’s hardware configuration were never revealed.
Back on August 21, gadget blog Engadget posted an open letter to Palm urging it to make some radical changes — including axing (among other things) the Foleo project. Colligan responded with a “thank you” post on the official Palm blog on August 23, saying he had forwarded the letter to the Palm executive staff and that they were “attacking almost every challenge” noted within.
In today’s cancellation announcement, Colligan states 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.”
Colligan would not speculate on a timeframe for reviving the Foleo.
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