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Palm has canned its new Foleo handheld just before thousands of wannabe users expected to be pulling apart its packaging.
In a move that's either bizarre or brilliant, Palm CEO Ed Colligan wrote on the company's official blog that as Palm was in the throes of developing its next generation software platform, it was best served to pull the pin.
"Because we were nearly at the point for shipping Foleo, this was a very tough decision," he wrote.
"Yet I am convinced this is the right thing to do. Foleo is based on second platform and a separate development environment, and we need to focus our efforts on one platform."
The new platform will boast far faster performance and a user-friendly user interface - something that Palm has long been the target of criticism over from market rivals.
"I have decided to cancel the Foleo mobile companion product in its current configuration and focus all of our energies on delivering our next generation platform and the first smartphones that will bring this platform to market.
"We will, of course, continue to develop products in partnership with Microsoft on the Windows Mobile platform, but from our internal platform development perspective, we will focus on only one."
Palmophiles across the blogosphere seem divided on whether Colligan and Palm founder Jeff Hawkins made the right move or not, although the end result is likely to be a better product. The big question on everyone's blogs is 'when?', but Colligan won't be drawn on that.
"When we do Foleo II it will be based on our new platform, and we think it will deliver on the promise of this new category. We're not going to speculate now on timing for a next Foleo, we just know we need to get our core platform and smartphones done first."
- NZ HERALD STAFF
