Palm dumps Foleo just as it was scheduled to launch

Your smartphone will be without a companion

4 September 2007 22:35 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

It's hard to believe that apart from die-hard Palm fans, there was anyone actually excitedly awaiting the product launch of this niche device, due this summer, but the Palm Foleo is no more.

Palm's 10-inch sub-laptop device, that was supposedly "the perfect companion for your smartphone", has been dropped by the company.

Ed Colligan, the CEO of Palm has stated in his blog: "I have decided to cancel the Foleo mobile companion product in its current configuration and focus all of our energies on delivering out next generation platform and the first smartphones that will bring this platform to market".

The Foleo, announced back in May, due to cost $500, was a mini laptop-sized device with a full-sized keyboard that connected wirelessly with your smartphone and gave you a more comfortable and productive way of working on emails and documents.

Last month an analyst from the Deutsche Bank reported that the Foleo was suffering delays due to major technical difficulties:

"These apparently included an inability to synchronize the Foleo with most models of the Treo, in particular the nominally high-volume Treo 680."

It appears that when Palm get the "one platform" (i.e., Palm OS) issue sorted they will revisit the Foleo, but until then, it's cost them $10 million, plus consumer trust, in damages...