Big news yesterday as Palm announced their Foleo mobile companion at the Wall Street Journal technology conference.
The Foleo is Linux-based device that uses a mobile phone for network connectivity. The device includes email, browsing, and file attachment software from DataViz. The premise is that it does 80% of what a person uses on their computer and with a longer battery life and lighter weight, a better device for traveling.
It’s hard to argue with the 80% claim — I easily spend more than 80% using applications inside of a web browser or my email client. But… I have had the pleasure of working on a variety of convergence devices and innovative form factors while working at Tandy Electronics, AST Computer, and Gateway. One of the things I learned is that 80% devices are generally well received in a focus group setting, but tend to fail when put into the marketplace.
The issue is that with 80% devices, the 20% edge cases tend to fall off a cliff, resulting in an overwhelmingly bad user experience rather than graceful degradation. At the focus group, the consumer tends to be aligned with the surveyor, focusing on the 80%, and these edge cases tend to be ignored or dismissed. The problem is that these edge cases do become more important later in the selling/buying process and can be profit breakers when discovered after the sale. If the new device is comparable in price to a 100% solution, this can be unsurmountable. In the case of Foleo, this might be failure to support Intuit’s Quicken, sync with Apple iTunes or Real Networks Rhapsody, or watch a DVD movie. All things that I tend to do a lot when on the road.
From the product announcement, its not clear what Foleo is doing about security. One of the big issues today around smartphones is that they are difficult for an IT shop to manage (there are a boatload of startups attempting to address this set of problems). IT departments will be concerned about authentication, file encryption, versioning, backup, etc. Nokia bought Intellisync for this very reason. If executives are the primary demographic, this can be a deal breaker unless the device is priced cheap enough that it can be hidden in an expense report.
I truly hope that Foleo is not yet another ‘tween device overcomes these obstacles. I do plan to get one and try it for myself — category defining products in their very nature are break with the status quo. Perhaps my fears are simply my inability to shove Foleo into an existing product category. Few things are more exciting than new products that help me discover new, productive, & transformative behavior patterns.
