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September 14th, 2007
There's nothing much new in this Guardian article titled "Can Palm find a way to survive?" Well, nothing new except for this line:
Palm this week told the Guardian "it will be 12 to 18 months" before a Linux Palm appears.
Previous remarks from Palm suggested that the new OS would appear on a device in 2008. Now it seems it could be well into 2009.
Colligan says the smartphones come first. Fans of the Foleo seem to have a long wait ahead.
It's hard to believe that another company won't get there first. A truly mobile laptop is coming.
It’s only a matter of time before an innovative company such as Apple comes out with a low-cost, super-light, instant-on machine that will wow tech-heads, leaving Palm in the position it is in right now—playing catch-up in a technology category it pioneered.
(From "In Defense of the Palm Foleo" by Glenn Derene)
UPDATE: Michael G suggests that The Guardian may be misquoting Colligan.
September 14th, 2007 at 8:11 am
whoa… did Palm really say that?
September 14th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
I hope that’s an underpromise. (and it makes me want a first gen Foleo even more!)
If it truly takes Palm 12-18 months to develop its new Linux OS and subsequent smartphones, FoleoII, etc., someone is going to beat them to market. Glenn mentions Apple, as I did in a previous post, but the more I think about that, the less I feel that way. One of Palm’s strengths is that, like RIM, they cater well to the enterprise user, which is to whom I thought the Foleo was targeted. It certainly wasn’t the only market, but likely the main one.
Apple, while innovative and successful at bringing technologies to market effectively, does not cater to enterprise users well. The WSJ ran an interesting article on this at the time of the iPhone’s release, stating that for all its cool features, the iPhone didn’t play well with most corporate e-mail servers.
This leads me to think that if someone is going to effectively develop and market a mobile companion Foleo-style device, it would likely be either RIM (the ultimate enterprise-friendly company) or a hardware specialist such as a Nokia/Samsung/Sony-Ericsson/etc.
September 14th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
That sounds like a misquote. I’ve seen quotes that it will be 12-18 months before we Jon Rubinstein’s direct influence on products. For example:
http://origin.mercurynews.com/business/ci_6882548
“Q: When will we see the first fruits of the Elevation deal?
“A: We haven’t been sitting on our hands. . . . We’re continuing to execute on our future products.
“Realistically, Jon’s direct involvement, you’re not going to see the fruits of that for 18 months.”
September 14th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
Well, 12 to *16* months would still be 2008, right. It’s not a lot different from what Colligan said in July. I don’t see anything that makes this quote particularly suspicious. And as recently as July Palm was posting new open positions for engineers tasked with “implementation of Java based mobile system software on new product development project.” That doesn’t sound to me like a project that would be yielding fruit early in 2008. Does it to you?
September 14th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
In July, Colligan was saying “some time next year”
http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/9489/linux-based-palm-os-due-sometime-in-2008/
So I agree, early 2008 would be unlikely.
September 15th, 2007 at 1:03 am
Well, 12-18 months from this week would be into 2009, for sure. But did Palm really say that to the Guardian?
As for the Macbook mini or whatever it’s called, I’ve been reading some on it and I think it’ll probably just be a full OSX laptop with decent battery life, quicker boot time, etc, with the price to match. As much as I’d like an embedded OS with Foleo-type advantages, it seems Apple is aiming for regular subnotebook territory. (For example, they originally planned on an optical drive, but that was scrapped later in the process. No way that would have been part of an iPhone-based laptop.)