Jaffa's Projects

A couple of emails in my inbox this morning from Ed Colligan, Palm CEO, saying the Foleo's been cancelled:

http://blog.palm.com/palm/2007/09/a-message-to-pa.html

I think the reasons are threefold:

1. A distinct lack of excitement from the existing Palm userbase (apart from some real zealots) - in fact, real hostility from both their base and columnists.


2. A mismanagement of the launch and bringing in software developers: obviously some people were getting devices and SDKs, but no-one in the open source community was (AFAICT). All the software announced to date has been rewrites/ports of existing Palm software. Hardly a paradigm shift.


3. The announcement of the Asus Eee PC and the Via Nanobook platforms killed any chance the Foleo had of success. They're cheaper, more flexible and more open.

(2) is an interesting one: it shows that despite all of the mistakes Nokia made with Maemo, they could've got it so much more wrong.