Palm announced the latest addition to their Treo smartphone line last week: the Palm OS-powered Treo 680. Perhaps I should have said "ACCESS-powered" since that's the brand that's stamped on all the new Palm OS devices now and since OS maker PalmSource has itself adopted the ACCESS name as the next step in the integration process with its parent company. (Check out their snazzy new merged web site, by the way, a complete replacement of the old ACCESS site.)
The entry-level Treo 680 wasn't a big surprise to anyone who has closely followed Palm over the last year, but it raises some interesting questions. If you were among the folks who was hoping this would be the announcement where Palm unveils a Treo with a next-generation version of the Palm OS, sorry, no dice. Not yet. While Palm remains tight-lipped about what the next step for the Palm OS will be (they have yet to approve the presumed successor, the ACCESS Linux Platform) they remain adamant that they are sticking with their dual-OS strategy. So one question raised by the 680--the first new GSM Treo running Palm OS in two years--is how long will Palm ride the new horse before they decide it's time to rev its old OS?
While I'm betting this Treo will be the last Palm OS Garnet smartphone to come out of Palm, I wouldn't be surprised if they plan to let the 680 run for a good year before they announce a Linux-powered successor. The ACCESS Linux Platform is not going to be delivered to licensees for a few months and will take another 12-18 months to ship on any handsets, due to integration, carrier testing, and regulatory hurdles. Even if Palm has secretly partnered over the last couple of years with someone other than ACCESS to develop their own Linux variant of the Palm OS, as I've suggested is likely, that's a very big project that's unlikely to give fruit for a while yet.
There are other reasons for Palm to hold off in bringing out a Treo with a next-generation Palm OS. I expect the 680 to be a substantial success for Palm, one they won't want to squelch early by announcing the obsolescence of the Palm OS. There's no question in my mind that the new sleeker, slimmer form-factor and the distinctive color options will breathe some new life into the old platform. Yes, the technical changes are incremental (more memory, tweaked software, supposedly improved reception) but I expect just the cosmetic improvements together with the aggressive pricing will substantially drive sales and expand the demographics of the user base. The volume of Treos that Palm is shipping now should be giving them some leverage to keep the bill of materials down on the hardware, so I'm guessing the Treo 680 introduced on Cingular for $199 will do very well for Palm, despite the new competition from Nokia, Motorola and BlackBerry. None of these contenders have the Treo's touchscreen, screen resolution, usability and pedigree.
While the 680 is clearly designed to appeal to a consumer market as compared to the Treo's prosumer and enterprise focus of the past, I believe it could have good legs in the enterprise as well. It's got everything that the popular Treo 650 has (including, I expect, BlackBerry Connect) but the low cost of the handset really starts to make some large smartphone deployments feasible, like the one being planned by my current client. The absence of a 3G radio may be more of a boon than a liability for many companies. 3G doesn't add a lot of value to most enterprise applications--mainly bigger wireless bills. All you can eat data on Verizon's EvDO network is $80/mo compared to $20 on Cingular's EDGE network, which is plenty fast for email and business apps.
Travelling through airports four or five times a month I meet an amazing number of business people with Treo 650s who almost universally favor them over the BlackBerry. (Pull out a smartphone next to me on a plane and I become quite a pest with my questions!) By comparison I see very few of the Windows Mobile Treo 700w. These business users have no concept that the Palm OS is "outdated"--only that they find their Treo 650s to work better than anything else they've tried. Palm will need to update the OS before very long, but I think with the right hardware Palm OS Garnet has a couple of good years left. The devil is in the details, of course, but from what I can see so far the Treo 680 is looking like it could be a winner for Palm.
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