darryl ramm’s blog

The Palm Foleo has to be one of the most lame-brained product ideas in decades. Foleo is supposed to be a simple “companion” for a smart phone, essentially providing a keyboard and larger screen and ability to browse the Web, check email etc. Palm is claiming the Foleo will be the start of a whole new product family. Good luck trying to convince anybody of that. And I know that “the market” often does not recognize the need for new products until they have established themselves—but the Palm Foleo does not pass even the simplest sniff test for a reasonable product.

My marketing sniff tests starts with the users. Who are the prototypical end users and therefore is there a market for this product? And I just don’t see any significant user base for the Foleo.

The Foleo is a simple device, with a simple UI but it does not seem targeted at end-users who want an ultra simple computing experience. Those users probably don’t want a mobile device as much as a simple fixed device. And they are unlikely to be buying smart phones and are not the business travellers that Palm seem to be targeting.

Palm frequently describes the example customer as business people who have smart phones and travel a lot. I used to travel an awful lot with a laptop and I don’t know any “mobile professional” who would want to travel even overnight on business without their laptop.

And what about those example scenarios where the folio is supposed to be useful? Like those situations where you get an urgent message while away from the office and need to respond to something. The Foleo does not deliver there—from my experience you often likely need more than just Web access and simple attachment handling to deal with issues while on the road. What about needing to pull up complex documents from you laptop, add things, create or edit a PowerPoint presentation while on the road, etc.

Travelling professionals will really want their laptop with them—with applications and the latest versions of documents with them. While those documents may be backed elsewhere they are not accessible over the Internet unless somebody has gone out of their way to publish or push them somewhere. One exception might be if you have fast Internet access to remote desktops (like with Citrix or similar products) then this device could help you. There are supposedly third parties doing remote desktop clients for the Folio, but it does not ship with any remote desktop support, and I still don’t believe that professional users won’t want a fully functioning small laptop with them.

What about other benefits, like being small and light? People who travel on business often end up with small laptops that are often not much larger than the Foleo yet provide full features and power. Instant on and off? Well starting up from hibernate is fast if you really need fast boot. And even though booting can be slow at times it is not like the Folio actually solves enough problems to be useful once it has started.

Oh yes to the marketing weenies, please can we try to avoid misspelling words like Foleo/Folio just because you think its cute or you think you need to for trademark protection. It is just annoying and bound to me misused.

What was Jeff Hawkins thinking? You’d think somebody would see the emperor has no clothes and mercy kill this product before it got to market. The trouble here may be that management is so invested in this they are blind and nobody is capable of or brave enough to try to kill it. And then finally there is the video of Hawkins publicly pitching this product–I expect those videos are going to come back to bite.