Palm insists Foleo will ship on time
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(InfoWorld) - Palm denied a recent industry report that its new Foleo mini-notebook would be delayed and said the device was still on target to launch in the U.S. "this summer," or by the end of the third quarter. The company was responding to a report suggesting that bugs in Foleo's software will delay the launch of the device from the end of August to as late as early October. The software bugs are preventing Foleo from correctly synchronizing data with Palm's Treo smartphone, according to a report posted Wednesday on Barron's Tech Trader Daily blog. The report was based on an earlier research note by a Deutsche Bank analyst. Palm unveiled Foleo in May, calling it a 2.5-pound "smartphone companion." The device will initially only be able to sync up with Palm's own Treo smartphones. Foleo allows users to read their office documents more easily on its 10-inch display than on a cramped smartphone screen and type e-mail messages more easily on its full keyboard than on a thumb-operated keypad. Palm insisted on Friday that it was still on track to meet its original shipping schedule for Foleo. "As stated on May 30, U.S. availability for the Palm Foleo mobile companion will begin this summer. We will let you know if this changes," said Jim Christensen, Palm's director of communications. Regardless of when Palm begins to sell the Foleo, any delays to the new product will not have a major impact on company earnings, one analyst said. "This is a minor glitch. If they're a year late, it's a problem, but if they're a couple months late, it's not going to make any difference -- all their money's in the Treos," said Jack Gold, principal analyst at J.Gold Associates. "I'd be more concerned if their new phones were late; then we'd be talking about tens of millions of dollars. But at best it's [Foleo's] going to be a slow burn for them; this thing's not going to take off," said Gold. Even strong sales of its Treo smartphone may not be enough for Palm. On June 28, the company reported a profit of $15.4 million for the fourth quarter,Â a 44 percent drop from its profit a year earlier. In recent years, Palm has been shifting its product portfolio away from PDAs, a market it pioneered, and towards smartphones, which offer potentially much greater profit margins because of their higher price tags. The Foleo represents another step toward larger, more expensive products. But industry skeptics are dubious about its prospects, saying that smartphone owners may be hesitant to carry a second device in their pockets or to pay $499 for Foleo to make existing features easier to use.
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The store adds such features as details of an expected dispatch date it the point where shoppers select a product. For example the Power Mac G5 Dual 2.5GHz is &quot;usually dispatched 1 - 3 Weeks
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De-Vodafoned across Europe Palm will next month make available an unlocked version of its Treo 500 smartphone following the end of carrier's Vodafone's time offering the handset on an exclusive basis.â¦
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Plus: Strong sales of phones, other gadgets boost PalmOne profit...Lawson expects quarterly loss...SCO to cap legal costs.
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update PalmOne on Monday introduced a handheld computer that holds on to data even when the battery runs down, as part of a revamping of its mobile-device lineup.
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(InfoWorld) - Despite consumers' cool reaction to ultramobile PCs, Palm will launch a handheld computer called Foleo with a full keyboard and 10-inch screen. The product, announced Wednesday, seems to fly against Palm's own strategy of migrating away from PDAsÂ built around data entry to smartphones centered on voice operation. Hardware vendors can earn larger profits selling the more expensive smartphones, such as Palm's Treo, which have grown in popularity thanks to features like mobile e-mail. Now Palm hopes to ride the coattails of smartphone popularity by pitching the Foleo as a "smartphone companion product." Users would carry both devices in their pockets, synchronizing data between the platforms just as PDA users swap data with their PCs. "Smartphones will be the most prevalent personal computers on the planet, ultimately able to do everything that desktop computers can do," but at times users need a bigger screen and full-size keyboard, said Palm founder Jeff Hawkins in a statement. The 2.5-pound (1.13 kilogram) Foleo stays connected to its companion smartphone through a Bluetooth wireless link and supports Internet browsing with either its own Wi-Fi card or the smartphone's radio, Palm said. Together, the wireless networks will allow users to read their e-mail and office documents, such as Word and Excel, files on a large screen instead of a cramped phone display. The Foleo PC uses the Linux OS and is designed to synchronize with both the Palm OS and the Windows Mobile version of the Treo smartphone. However, Palm hopes to sell the Foleo to users of all types of smartphones, saying it can easily link to most smartphones based on Windows Mobile and requires a modest development effort to link to smartphones using operating systems from Research in Motion, Apple, or Symbian. By choosing the Linux OS, Palm is also encouraging software developers to create new applications for the platform. That decision could be a successful strategy, one analyst said. "Using the analogy of the OS as plumbing for the device, with Linux, all the plumbing is already developed, so it's easy to layer your own application on top of it," said Todd Kort, an analyst with Gartner. One drawback might be the proliferation of 10 or 20 different types of Linux flavors in the market, but several consortiums are tackling that problem by trying to define software standards, Kort said. Palm will also win some marketing buzz by being one of the first vendors to bring a Linux-based handheld PC to the U.S. Motorola and other vendors sell some comparable products in China and Japan but have not yet brought them to the U.S., Kort said. Palm will sell the Foleo in the U.S. this summer for $499 after an introductory $100 rebate.
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Carrier has locked up the hot new PalmOne smart phone until some time after the new year.
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(InfoWorld) - Palm Inc. began taking orders for its Treo 680 smartphone on Wednesday, hoping to expand from its core business customers to a larger market of casual, first-time users. Palm is charging US$399 for the "unlocked" version of the phone, allowing users to subscribe to any carrier, and plans to begin shipping the phones shortly after Dec. 1. One carrier has already announced a plan for the phone -- Cingular Wireless LLC will begin selling the Treo 680 for $199 on Friday. Palm hopes to attract a new demographic by designing the Treo 680 with an internal antenna, making it slimmer than previous models, and offering it in four colors, according to a statement by John Hartnett, Palm's senior vice president of global markets. In another bid for those casual customers, Palm has moved beyond purely business functions, and will offer entertainment applications like the ability to show Flash-based movies such as those seen on the YouTube Web site, and to play MP3 songs through a 30-day trial of Yahoo Inc.'s mobile, digital music service. New users might also appreciate the Google Maps function, which offers personalized driving directions or addresses for nearby restaurants. "Location-based services hold great promise in a wide variety of areas, such as helping friends find each other, helping advertisers more effectively target prospects, and even ensuring that no man ever has to stop for directions again," said Avi Greengart, principal analyst for mobile devices with Current Analysis. As a phone, the Palm OS-based device operates on the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) networks. Palm hopes the Treo 680 will help it to grow beyond its roots in the slow-growing PDA (personal digital assistant) market, and claim a greater share of the burgeoning smartphone industry. Smartphone shipments worldwide grew 75.5 percent to 34.7 million units in the first half of 2006, according to research firm Gartner Inc. In comparison, PDA sales grew only 5.7 percent to 7.4 million units. North America is the only region where PDAs continue to outsell smartphones, so Palm hopes its new product has arrived in U.S. markets in time to catch a wave of people upgrading to the new technology. With only 5 percent of the worldwide market for combined PDA and smartphone markets, Palm needs the Treo 680 to be a financial success in order to compete with its larger rivals. Nokia Corp. is the largest vendor, with 42 percent market share, followed by Research in Motion Ltd. with 6.5 percent and Motorola Inc. with 5.3 percent, according to Gartner. Posting strong sales through the holiday season will be crucial for that plan, as Gartner predicts smartphones sales will continue to rise, totaling 81 million for the full year of 2006. That growth will be fueled by a jump in consumer demand, focused on individual details like fashion and multimedia, according to a statement by Gartner analyst Roberta Cozza. Â
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Awarapan: Preserved your ticket and await a refund.
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Same design though? The wraps come off Palm's latest Euro-centric smartphone on Wednesday, and while speculation has centred on the notion the device might be the company's upcoming Centro product, Palm has claimed it isn't.â¦
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Palm Inc.  cut its second-quarter profit and revenue forecasts on Monday, blaming a delay in shipping its new Treo 750 smartphone in the United States.
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Palm Inc.  cut second-quarter profit and revenue forecasts on Monday, blaming a delay in shipping its new Treo 750 smartphone in the United States.
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The Smartphone maker is taking advance online orders for its Shift ultramobile PC.
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Falling sales to blame Palm has issued a profits warning ahead of its Q1 results, due in full on 1 October.â¦
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Let's work on core stability, first "Foleo is the most exciting product I have ever worked on," Palm founder Jeff Hawkins, May 2007â¦
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A company representative confirmed that Palm is getting ready to cut jobs, after a report earlier Wednesday that perhaps "hundreds" could be out of work.
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Blog: Palm revealed earlier this year that it's working on its own Linux-based version of the venerable Palm OS, but it's not going to arrive until next year.