The Un-Treo

At this past weekend’s 1SRC chat the regulars and I kicked around the idea of Palm releasing “the un-Treo.”  The un-Treo would be the best parts of the Tungsten C and the TX mashed down and stuffed into the body of a Treo 680.  At the time, it seemed like a great idea.

Building the Dream

The un-Treo would be fast.  Really fast.  A Wi-Fi 802.11g radio could run circles around EDGE cellular connections.  The un-Treo would run Palm OS 5.4.9 and would feature 512MB of RAM or more with lots of space left over for DB Cache.  Because it is a Palm, it would have ease of use built in thanks to the Palm OS user interface and the great PIM applications that we all know and love.

With the un-Treo you will be able to leave your iPod at home because music will sound great on built-in stereo speakers and cover art and video will look fantastic on a high-res+ 320x480 pixel touch screen that can switch between landscape and portrait modes.  (Who needs an iPhone when you can have an un-Treo?)

And lastly, the un-Treo, unlike the iPhone, will have a vast third-party software library thanks to the thousands of existing applications already available for the Palm OS platform.  Combine that with the great price of just $199 and Palm would have a runaway success that would leave the over priced, closed garden iPhone in the dust.

Here is why Palm will never release the “un-Treo.”

A Different Point of View

The fact of the matter is that Palm already has an “un-Treo.”  It is called the Palm TX.  The Palm TX is thin, it can run thousands of existing Palm OS applications, has a fast Wi-Fi radio, a high-res+ touch screen, and can already play music and videos.  Storage shouldn’t be a problem because the TX officially supports 2GB SD cards and many customers have reported on forums like 1SRC.com that some 4GB SD cards also work.  (The Palm TX does not support new newer SDHC cards.)

So why isn’t Palm putting more resources into updating the TX to compete with devices like Apple’s iPod and iPhone, and Microsoft’s Zune media player?  The answer is that it isn’t economical to do so and sales won’t support the development and marketing costs.  At the recent Q4 FY07 conference call, it was stated that Treo product family now makes up 80% of Palm’s revenue.  The remaining 20% of Palm’s revenue is comprised of Z22, E2 (formerly known as the Tungsten E2) and TX handhelds.  With all of the other projects that Palm is working on (Palm OS II, new Treo form factors, Windows Mobile 6.0, the Foleo, software upgrades and new application development, and the all of the changes in process management that Elevation Partners will bring) there are limited resources to divert to building a new PDA handheld device.  If you look at the product offerings from all of the other PDA vendors from just a few years ago, almost all of them have halted development of new devices.

What Palm should be doing is working with their marketing company to come up with an ad campaign to inform customers that Palm’s handhelds and Treo smartphones can do more than email.  Palm could also leverage their Self-Paced Learning Guide website to teach people how to get music and video on to their devices.

Palm should be focusing on the ease of use aspects of loading and playing music on their devices.  The key reason why the iPod has been so successful is because it is unbelievably easy to get content on the device.  The good news for Palm and their customers is that all of the required pieces for easy media playback are software; and software is easy to add.

Palm has already licensed and pre-installs NormSoft’s Pocket Tunes on their devices.  To complete the picture, why not ship new devices with Pocket Tunes Deluxe?  Pocket Tunes Deluxe connects to Microsoft Windows Media Player to synchronize content to your Palm’s storage card.  Pocket Tunes is a wonderfully advanced music player.  It supports all of today’s popular file formats including .mp3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, .wav and .WMA.  Pocket Tunes Deluxe, which includes the Palm OS and Windows desktop applications, costs $40 for a new license.  Palm could easily pass that cost on to the customer and provide a better of the of the box experience.  The cost impact on handhelds and Treo smartphones should be minimal.

In conclusion

With the Foleo product line coming into the picture later this summer, I honestly don’t see a full touch screen Treo coming in the next year.  We may see built-in Wi-Fi support on a Windows Mobile 6.0 Treo at some point in the next year, however, I don’t expect a Wi-Fi enabled Palm OS Treo to appear before Palm OS II begins shipping on new Treo units.

Rather than trying to compete on style points of the hardware, Palm should be focusing on and playing up (sorry about the pun) the media features of their existing solutions.  How many people carry around a Treo and an iPod?  I carry both because so far, it has been easier to load media on the iPod.  If Palm made it simple to load media on a Treo, I would have no need for an iPod or the iPhone.

What do you think?  Should Palm be highlighting the media capabilities of their Treo family?  Let us know in the 1SRC forums.