Welcome back to the third installment of the Palm Foleo developer interview! After Dmitry Grinbergs down-to-the-bone negative feedback(a must read) and Jan Slodicka’s very interesting rollup, Andreas Voigt took the time to answer my questions! Andreas Voigt is a local celebrity in the German Palm OS economy, rolls a load of cool Acceca Meazura peripherals and generally is a cool guy – let’s see what he thinks!
Please tell us more about yourself and your company!
vivomobile has been in the service and repair business since 1996 and in the embedded control business since 1983. We currently develop and sell hardware add-ons for Aceeca’s “Meazura” range of handheld devices, mainly RFID and GPS stuff.
My personal experience with computers dates back to the 1970s, where i built some myself. My first handheld computer was an Atari Portfolio and i have owned all Palm devices released in Europe ever since and some available to other parts of the world only. For curiosity and for service reasons, i know them all inside out 
What did you expect Palm to release? What were your initial impressions of the Foleo?
Talking to many Treo users about their wishes describing a “bigger” smartphone (one with a bigger display and a bigger keyboard) we always ran into the contradiction that there is a limitation in size when talking about mobile phones that limits development. People always want a mobile (smart)phone that is lightweight, small (flat) and will fit into any pocket, the Treo line of devices is already at the very edge in terms of size and weight.
A smartphone “companion” like the Foleo is the resulting product when you simply follow these design restrictions logically, splitting functionality into two separate devices.
I was not at all surprised about the product, i was a bit surprised about the size, i had expected it to be smaller, but i do understand the reason for a full-sized keyboard and i think it does make sense. There have been other products in the past that tried to deliver the same, but there is no substitute to a full-size keyboard – and where such a keyboard is, there is space for a reasonable sized screen. We’re talking about devices that do NOT fit into your shirt pocket, so anything up to letter size and up to an inch in thickness is ok. That’s what the Foleo fits into.
What do you think about the device now that the news is out for a few days?
Well, unless i got my hands on one of these, i refuse to make any detailed comments. I like the concept, i think splitting functionality is the right way to go but i want to test drive it, although the webcast is already very impressive. The concept of synchronizing with your smartphone directly and having anything available at the touch of a button – “at your fingertips” (i think there was another company promising this for a long time now…) looks nice and should deliver an experience of mobility not made available by any other product i know. Closest one may be the NetBook, but that was way more expensive and lacks the sync feature.
Do you plan to produce products or provide services for the Foleo?
Oh, well, “products” is sure limited to software, we’re not into that at the moment. “services” depends on what is demanded by customers. If there is such demand, we may very well provide it.
Do you think that the Foleo will sell well? Will it get a successor?
The Foleo will sell well, but people, mostly companies that is, may have to be introduced to the benefits of the product first. First time comments i have heard clearly show that many people think of a “notebook”, when thinking about the Foleo, but this is quite a misconception. Successors will follow up some day, i’m sure, but why think about it right now…
The Foleo looks very much like a subnotebook/UMPC mixture. How will it fare against UMPCs?
UMPCs do, as of today, not provide (sub)notebook convenience, lack operating time, are heavyweighted compared to their size and are very expensive. On top of that, you get a Windows powered device and nothing else. The Foleo on the other hand comes equipped with a software suite that makes it usable from the very moment you turn it on, has a fully fledged keyboard, a decent screen, good battery and nice price tag. Why would i want a UMPC then? People using mobile devices don’t care that much about the operating system, many smartphone owners don’t even know what their device is running on (this is different to desktop users, but the demands are completely different!), so the OS is just a “don’t care”.
The Foleo was hyped almost as much as Apple’s iPhone. Which of the boxen deserves the hype more?
“Deserve the hype”, well, Palm devices never caused a hype as big as the one the iPhone has caused and both the iPhone and the Foleo still have to show that they live up to their promises. By the way: There was no hype about the Foleo or did i miss something?
Would you prefer Palm to open the Foleo platform to other hardware developers?
I don’t quite understand that: There is no expansion option with the Foleo, so why should Palm “open it up”? If you are talking about the Linux OS inside, Palm has already announced that all, a software developer needs, will be made available upon release of the product. You can expect a whole universe of ported third party apps showing up not long after.
If Palm decides to not license the OS to other companies, well, there is nothing to license, as Linux is already open source and it is completely up to device manufacturers if they want to take that road too. Nokia has the N770 and N800 out, surely evaluating options with Linux too.
How will the Foleo affect the Palm OS economy and the PDA/smartphone market in general?
Time will tell. The idea behind the Foleo is brilliant, it does have huge potential, things do depend on marketing.
Anything you would like to add?
Not right now. I want to get my hands on a Foleo first
We are a quite small company, though by developing software for 
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