Palm is holding a special press conference this Thursday October 12th in conjunction with the DigitalLife tradeshow. Rumors are flying that they will be making a new product announcement at that time.
Rumors vary on what the product announcement might be. The most likely is that they are simply going to officially announce the low-cost Treo 680 that we all know is coming and Palm executives have already alluded to.
During Palm last quarterly conference call Palm CEO Ed Colligan talked about the last remaining new Treo smartphone promised for release this year. He stated the release would come in the "very near future". The product will have worldwide distribution and will be offered by over 20 carriers by the end of this year.
Shaun over at Palm24/7 goes on to say that he believes the official announcement of the Treo 750 in the U.S. will be made soon as well.
Interestingly the rumor goes on to say that the Treo 750 will follow about two weeks later, and will retail for around $450. Of course all this is unverified, but the amount of leaks and corroborating information coming from all over seems to support that the arrival of these two devices to US stores is imminent.
See our PalmZone.net articles Palm Leaks Treo 750 and 680 Cingular Photos (9/25/06) and Palm and Cingular Testing the Treo 680 "Nitro" (9/22/06).
However, Ed Hardy over at Brighthand gets a little more aggressive and has speculated that they may be announcing some new convential PDA's in the near future.
I've seen some very good indications that Palm intends to release new traditional handhelds this fall. I haven't published anything about this before because I don't know any details and can't reveal where I got the information from. That doesn't make a very good article... I don't have absolute knowledge what the new models will be, but I'm not expecting anything earth-shaking. Right now, the possibilities are greatly limited by the fact that any device will have to run Palm OS Garnet... But even if it doesn't happen there, I'm sure it will happen some time soon.
Why am I so certain? Because Palm still depends on handheld sales for a big percentage of its revenue. Despite the fact that the mobile industry is moving in the direction of smartphones, it will still be some time before things have completely moved in that direction...
I'm still willing to go out on a limb and make some predictions on what the new Palm handhelds will be. It seems like a no-brainer that this company will introduce a LifeDrive 2. This model will offer at least twice as big a built-in hard drive as the original, but will also not have the technical drawbacks that have driven users out of their minds.
There have been some rumors of a next-generation Palm TX. According to these, the internal storage of this device will be a gigabyte or so.
A new entry-level device might also be on the docket.
Thanks to
PalmInfoCenter,
Palm24/7, and
Brighthand for the information.
UPDATE (10/10): Palm, Inc. Announces DigitalLife Press Conference on Oct. 12
Palm, Inc. President and Chief Executive Officer Ed Colligan today invites media to join him for a press conference at DigitalLife on Thursday, Oct. 12, to announce a new Treo(TM) product. The press conference will be held at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City. Lunch will begin at 12:30 p.m. EDT, and the press conference will follow at 1 p.m. EDT.
If you plan to attend the press conference, please RSVP as soon as possible to Sara Coughlin at
[email protected] or 650.762.2957. Seating at the press conference is limited.
At the show, Palm also will feature hands-on demonstrations of its latest Treo smartphone as part of the DigitalLife Cosmo Lounge, booth No. 1061.
Editor Notes
Well, the cat is out of the bag now. The official press release says Palm will announce "a new Treo product". So that means it will be a single product and it won't be a conventional PDA. Therefore, it has to be the announcement we all know is coming about the Treo 680.
Hopefully this doesn't mean that Palm won't release some other products this fall at a later date.
Update (10/10): Official Palm press release added.
