Exclusive Q and A with Palm: What does the future hold?

Posted January 9, 2008 at 02:08 PM by Doug Berger

Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Features, Interviews, Trade Shows, CES

I had the chance to sit down with Palm’s PR for a private briefing at CES 2008 and had some time for Q/A at the end.  I disclosed to them that I’m a big Palm supporter and are waiting for their big “come back,” so they knew I’m not the enemy.

A large part of our discussion surrounded the infamous “open letter” to Palm that Engadget’s Peter Rojas, Ryan Block, and Joshua Topolsky published back in August called Dear Palm: It’s time for an intervention, and we discussed shortly thereafter.  Read on for the full Q and A regarding their decision to stop production of the folio, their next gen platform, and plans to go head-to-head with the iPhone.

I assume you’re familiar with the “open letter” from Engadget.  Was the Folio production stopped because of that?

No, definitely not.  If you read Ed Colligan’s response to Engadget’s letter, you’ll see that we want to focus all of our attention on developing the next-generation platform, instead of taking on a new one.  Side note: Here’s a direct quote from Colligan’s Folio cancellation notice on the Palm Blog: “In the course of the past several months, it has become clear that the right path for Palm is to offer a single, consistent user experience around this new platform design and a single focus for our platform development efforts. To that end, and after careful deliberation, 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.”

Will Palm be coming out with a response to the iPhone?

Our current strategy is focusing on segments.  We’re maturing as a company, and we’ve looked at it, and we’re not ruling it out.  With the new platform, you may very well see a phone that competes in that arena.

So are you developing the next-gen Palm OS internally or partnering with someone?

We’re developing internally based on the Linux kernal.  We’ll be leveraging open source goodness, but putting our secret sauce on top. Side note: By far my favorite quote from the Q/A.

The next-gen platform will be flexible, fast, and have a modern UI.  It will also be easy for our developers to work on.

Since it’s taken you so long to come out with a new version of Palm OS, and lost a big part of the development community, do you think your next-gen OS will have the same positive response as it did the first time around?

The developers really made us who we are.  With the next-gen platform, we’re going to do it right, we’ve made the acquisitions, and we’re not going to do something half-baked.  We’re going to release the best and most complete solution that really delights our customers.

Something that I’m concerned about is the size / thickness of your products to date.  Do you plan on coming out with anything that’s significantly thinner?

As you can see with our Palm Centro, we wanted to do something that feels good in the hands.  It’s not worth doing something that has poor battery life, or antenna sensitivity.  It has a big keyboard, because it’s a work device.  It makes sense for that customer base.

Yeah, but slim is in!

See what the performance is on the slim devices out there though.  We want good press on best industrial design, but really want to be the best phone out there.  That’s when you win.  And instead of the Crackberry, we want the Cracktro.” Side note: I’m going to start calling the Treo the Cracktro.

Are there any plans to get rid of the big keyboard on the Treo?

You won’t see us remove the keyboard just to remove the keyboard.  Only if it make sense for the targeted customer base.  People like to feel the click of buttons when they press them.

But there’s products released this year that give the users feedback with a vibration and a click when they press the screen.

The touch-click cannot replace the feel of the click click click.”

OK, thank you for your time.