Palm's Foleo gets cool reception
Published: 31 May 2007 10:16 BST
Palm's bid to reinvent mobile computing looks an awful lot like the current state of mobile computing, but with less horsepower.
Company founder Jeff Hawkins unveiled the Foleo device at the D: All Things Digital conference on Wednesday. Foleo is a 2.5-pound laptop PC with a 10-inch display that runs Linux. It's designed to let smartphone users read and respond to their email and documents on a full keyboard with a larger screen, Hawkins said.
The idea seems to be that users of smartphones, like Palm's Treo, who don't want to carry a regular Windows or Mac laptop on business trips could use the $499 (£252) Foleo (the price comes after a $100 (£50) mail-in rebate) as a companion device to prevent their thumbs from cramping up after a long day of dashing off emails. It uses flash memory, so it turns on quickly without a long boot process and syncs up with a smartphone running Windows Mobile or Palm OS over a Bluetooth connection.
However, the Foleo uses an under-powered processor that isn't really suited for video, Hawkins admitted. It gets five hours of battery life. It wasn't designed to be a stand-alone product apart from its smartphone, although it can use its Opera browser to surf the web over a built-in Wi-Fi connection.
It doesn't sync calendar appointments, just email and contacts. And it doesn't work yet with widely used mobile email products such as RIM's BlackBerry software or Motorola's GoodLink software.
"I think it's probably the most disappointing product I've seen in several years," said Todd Kort, an analyst with Gartner. "To think that anyone would carry something with a 10-inch display at 2.5 pounds as an adjunct to a phone just doesn't make any sense to me."
The Foleo becomes the latest attempt at developing the "one true mobile device" — a quest that's growing increasingly crowded as PC companies push gadgets like ultramobile PCs, and smartphone companies try to outdo each other's sleek designs. And, as you might have heard, later this month Apple's iPhone will enter the field.
Hawkins said Palm will initially target heavy users of wireless email who are looking for a portable device to ease the burden of relying on a smartphone as a primary computing device. It's hard to work with documents inside the small window afforded by a smartphone, and almost impossible to read email at a quick glance without a lot of scrolling. That's why most smartphone users still need to bring their laptops along on business trips — because any serious typing can't be done on a Treo, BlackBerry or a Motorola Q.
Palm thinks these people would be willing to spend the $499 (£252) to get a device that could make them more productive without having to resort to lugging around a bulky laptop on short trips. But road warriors truly concerned about laptop weight can choose from dozens of two- to three-pound ultraportable laptop PCs that offer far more capabilities than the Foleo, analysts say.
This is a small category of PC user. Ultraportable laptop sales only accounted for 1.5 percent of the US retail PC market in the fourth quarter of last year — the busiest PC shopping season — said Samir Bhavnani, an analyst with Current Analysis West. Smartphone users are also a small percentage of the overall cell phone market, which means a pretty small portion of the population might be feeling the pain described by Hawkins, Bhavnani said.
If you're a mobile user who's familiar with the limits of a smartphone and you don't want to carry a standard five-pound laptop, you've probably already bought an ultraportable laptop, Gartner's Kort said.
"If you're on a two- to three-day business trip and if [Foleo's] almost as big and almost as heavy, why not just carry the notebook?" Kort said. Business users will still need a regular PC to handle their corporate applications, and home users aren't going to want a laptop that can't show video or play games, he said.
But the attractive price could help sway some converts. The average US retail cost of an ultraportable laptop was $1,778 (£900) in the first quarter of this year. That compares with the $851 (£430) it cost to buy an average laptop, and the $499 (£252) Palm wants for the Foleo, according to Current Analysis West.
And while this is a first-generation product that might not wow early adopters, it could draw more interest as developers create more applications, said Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies.
"It could be an interesting device as a stand-alone low-cost Linux computer," Bajarin said. But that's one of those chicken-and-the-egg questions: you're not going to get a lot of developers interested in a product unless…
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