Palm unveils Foleo PC as smart phone companion

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 PDAs built around data entry to smart phones centered on voice operation. Hardware vendors can earn larger profits selling the more expensive smart phones, 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 smart phone popularity by pitching the Foleo as a "smart phone companion product." Users would carry both devices in their pockets, synchronizing data between the platforms, just as PDA users swap data with their PCs.

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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 PDAs built around data entry to smart phones centered on voice operation. Hardware vendors can earn larger profits selling the more expensive smart phones, 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 smart phone popularity by pitching the Foleo as a "smart phone companion product." Users would carry both devices in their pockets, synchronizing data between the platforms, just as PDA users swap data with their PCs.

"Smart phones 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 smart phone through a Bluetooth wireless link and supports Internet browsing with either its own Wi-Fi card or the smart phone'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 operating system, and is designed to synchronize with both the Palm operating system and the Windows Mobile version of the Treo smart phone. However, Palm hopes to sell the Foleo to users of all types of smart phones, saying it can easily link to most smart phones based on Windows Mobile, and requires a modest development effort to link to smart phones using operating systems from Research in Motion, Apple or Symbian.

By choosing the Linux operating system, 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.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.