Palm Pulls the Plug on Absurd Foleo Product

In what must certainly be a move to avoid embarrassing both himself and his company, Palm CEO Ed Colligan has killed off the Foleo, the "smartphone companion" announced this summer which met with ambivalence at best, ridicule at worst.

In case you missed it, the Foleo was going to be a kind of mini laptop designed for use with a smartphone (most likely a Treo). With a full keyboard, a 10-inch screen, and a Bluetooth connection, the idea was that you could have a bigger, more full-featured interface to your Treo instead of having to thumb-type your way through emails and Office files.

There's a germ of a good idea here (who likes typing on smartphone, after all?), but there was so much to be annoyed by that it's clear why the Foleo found few early fans and zero hype. Why carry a 2 1/2-pound non-laptop when you can have a 4-pound (or even a 3-pound) real one? Why spend $500 on a glorified external keyboard for your Treo? And, of course, the kicker: Don't most people who carry Treos do so so they don't have to carry a device like the Foleo?

Well, today Palm finally wised up, and good for them! You can sift through the official announcement if you'd like, but there's not much there in the way of a mea culpa except for a lot of corporatese about needing "world-class products" that are "central to our core focus." Palm is writing off a mere $10 million due to the shutdown of the Foleo project. If you ask me, they're getting off easy.

Foleo, we hardly knew ye. If you'd like to remember the gadget that never was, give Ben Patterson's old pros and cons analysis a spin... though I recommend you start with the cons.

LINK: Official Palm blog