The past year has been particularly rough on Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Palm, with rivals like Research In Motion (RIM), Nokia and High Tech Computer (HTC), announcing various new devices and product innovations while Palm's flagship product, the Treo, has mostly kept the same look and functionality it's had since 2003, when the Treo 600 was first launched. RIM and HTC have also both been successful in penetrating the vast consumer market, while Palm and its Treo 680 smartphone, the first Treo aimed at consumers, hasn't built much of a user base. (Perhaps because the Treo 680 looks just like its bulky Treo siblings, expect for a lack of an external antennae, which has become a Treo fixture and the fact that it comes in a variety of colors. It also featured the same old Palm OS, which hasn't received a major upgrade in five years.)
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| Palm Treo 750 |
In March, various news outlets reported that Palm was considering a sale of the company, or at least seeking funding from venture capitalists. Nokia or Motorola seemed like the leading contenders. Later that month, Palm reported that its quarterly profit had dropped nearly 17 percent from its previous quarter to $16.5 million. And its net income in the most recent quarter plummeted 43 percent to $15.4 million, according to BusinessWeek.com.
This was right around the time I reviewed Palm's latest Treo, the Treo 750, and it was immediately apparent why Palm was being swept away by the competition: the device was the largest and heaviest of the phones I included in my review, and its battery life was horrendous in comparison to the other phones. Palm users have long complained about the Palm OS's lack of reliability due to frequent crashes and other issues, but the Treo 750 is one of the few Treo devices that runs on Windows Mobile, so I didn’t experience those problems firsthand.
In what seemed like it could be the start of a turnaround, Palm in late May unveiled a new product at a Wall Street Journal technology conference, called Foleo, which it dubbed a "smartphone companion." The product was a light, Linux-based PC that looked like a small laptop or subnotebook, and it was meant to make e-mail management easier for users by providing a larger screen and keyboard. I remember immediately questioning its viability after reading a brief description of the Foleo demonstration, though I was impressed that Palm had finally tried something new and different.
Then the company caught a break when Elevation Partners, a private equity firm, said it would it sink some $325 million into the firm in exchange for a 25 percent equity stake. Rock star Bono, of the uber popular Irish band U2, is one of five partners at the private equity firm. But the excitement around the investment was short-lived, as Palm soon after announced a layoff of "a small percentage" of its roughly 1,200 staffers. Many of the affected came from its U.S. development group, according to reports.
Until a couple of weeks ago, Palm had largely fallen off my radar, but then came the announcement that it was scratching the planned Foleo
