Will Palm webOS bring back the Foleo?
Feb 25 2009
“I have decided to cancel the Foleo mobile companion product in its current configuration and focus all of our energies on delivering our next generation platform and the first smartphones that will bring this platform to market.”
-Ed Colligan, Palm CEO
Ok, Apple isn’t coming out with a netbook and Palm has announced the Pre which includes their new operating system called webOS. So how about reviving the Foleo? A device that received short sighted remarks in the press and looking back can be seen as a precursor to the current batch of netbooks.
It is easy to see how the Foleo appears to have more in common with current netbooks than with the original concept of being a companion to Palm’s other mobile products. Announced in 2007 at the D Conference by Jeff Hawkins it only survived a handful of months publicly before being cancelled in later that year in September. Used with a mobile device for data connection and document sharing it was planned to have a 10″ widescreen display, full-size keyboard, WiFi, Bluetooth and had a price of $500 (after $100 rebate)
“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.” -Ed Colligan, Palm CEO
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Palm’s webOS
- An embedded Linux Operating System with a custom User Interface
- Can run on different hardware, size screens, resolutions, orientations, with and without keyboards or touchscreens
- Native applications built on HTML, CSS and JavaScript
If webOS is the new platform that Colligan refers too then maybe Palm will create something along the original idea of the Foleo. Something so simple allowing Palm to define the netbook market the way Apple did with portable media players. Letting them make all of the other competition in the market look lacking in comparison.
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