The european nonsense-RoHS(aka annoy all small electronics shacks regulation) has finally began to show its ugly face on the first of July. Palm was hit, as they can’t ship any more Treo units to Europe from now on(The Palm Treo 700 series is CDMA-Only, and there is no single CDMA system in Europe as far as I know). Now that must be bad news…
If you ask me, that indeed isn’t the best thing that could hapen. However, everyone who now predicts doom and gloom was wrong – Palm cleverly counteracted the EU bureaucracy’s ideocy – they simply stuffed their distributors with Treo 650’s on the 30th of June.
In adition, Ed Colligan announced that he wants to have his “european” products pushed into the european market as fast as possible, that means at the end of 2006. While nobody can be sure if these machines will be Palm OS or Windows Mobile powered(the roadmap leaked a few days ago said both), they will IMHO be in Europe before the Treo 650’s stock finally runs out.
So, european friends, keep your hair on and continue sleeping sound. The EU has probably killed off hundreds of elecronics companies with their RoHS idiocy, but Palm managed to “fight back”!
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I’m indeed hoping for some cool Palm devices on the European market this year. I was really dissapointed when known the 700p wasn’t compatible with the European data carriers, now I’m hoping for a great Palm device wich combines the best from all PDA’s.
Yep. There are *always* unintended — and usually negative — consequences when lawmakers start to think. I wonder how much extra “pollution” is now in Europe as a result of this law and the predictable actions of manufacturers seeking to beat the deadline.
RoHS is a good idee to stop pollution in countrys like China et al.
Other countrys like Japan meanwhile initiate similar proceedings.
When Palm now can’t sell the Treo 650 burdened with lead in Europe, the manufactor in China can’t sell the more Treo 650 to Palm. So the manufactor in China must change the production process.
Palm should know the european law when selling products in Europe or other countys worldwide. And Palm had time enough (5 years) to notice this law is comming! Why they didn’t it!
I was waiting for a 650 successor with PalmOS available in Europe anyway. And while I’m quite indifferent about the environmental aspects of the RoHS, I’m convinced that it helped to get my 650-successor FASTER in the end.
The only idiocy I can see so far is this blog bashing on the RoHS. It went not “in effect” suddenly. It was known long before when this will happen and most manufacturers hadn’t a problem to meet the requirements long before the deadline.
[...] The machine will be offered in team with Vodafone, and will target the European market that currently is without Treo thanks to RoHS. However, Palm has not yet disclosed any further info about the machine. [...]