The new device, like the majority of products from the Milpitas, California-based company, will not have phone connectivity, at least not in its initial iteration. Rather, PalmOne will be seeking to leverage the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint capabilities of the Documents To Go software it licenses from DataViz, already available on its Tungsten T3 handheld, and add the ability to manage music and video files.
The company said it will target customers who are eager to take full advantage of the trend toward ‘digital everything’ – from documents and email to music, images and video, as standalone files or in organized folders. It plans to continue with the Zire PDA for consumers and the Tungsten for professionals, leaving the Treo 650 to fly the PalmOne flag as its sole representative in the smart phone space.
PamlOne appears to be targeting iPod users on the media side, hoping that the addition of Office functions will entice them to switch to a device that can offer two-in-one capabilities. Even though office productivity is clearly one of its functions, it is evidently the individual user that PalmOne wants to sell to, rather than corporate IT departments, which are unlikely to want their office staff bundling music onto the same mobile device from which they produce texts and spreadsheets.
