Palm cans Foleo tablet

Palm is canceling the launch of the Foleo companion, a tablet computer designed to synch with Palm smartphones, right before its expected launch. As the Foleo was based on a separate development platform than Palm’s handheld devices, Palm felt that the dual platform approach would only be counterproductive and has chosen instead to focus on Palm’s next-generation platform, Palm CEO Ed Colligan said in a blog post on Palm.com.

“Because we were nearly at the point of shipping Foleo, this was a very tough decision,” Colligan said in the post. “Yet I am convinced this is the right thing to do. Foleo is based on a second platform and a separate development environment, and we need to focus our efforts on one platform. Our own evaluation and early market feedback were telling us that we still have a number of improvements to make Foleo a world-class product, and we cannot afford to make those improvements on a platform that is not central to our core focus. That would not be right for our customers or for our developer community.”

The much-maligned was scheduled for launch by summer’s end, but Colligan said the company would instead eat the $10 million in development costs, while reserving the right to launch the Foleo in the future, this time under a unified Palm platform.