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If you’ve been reading the news lately, you’ll note that Palm is spinning off the Platform Group into a wholly-owned subsidiary. The Platform Group creates the Palm Operating System (PalmOS) that it licenses to companies such as Handera, Handspring, Kyocera, and Sony. The part of Palm which is not spinning off is the Solutions Group. It’s responsible for creating Palm-branded devices such as the m505, the m125, and the Palm VII-series. In this new scheme, the Solutions Group becomes a licensee to the Platform Group much like Handspring, Kyocera, or Sony is today.

A. from Palm Platform Marketing came by to the Stanford Palm User Group at the Printer’s Inc. Cafe tonight to demo a number of Palm licensee products, including the Samsung SPH-I300 phone, Kyocera Smartphone, m505, Visor Edge, Visor Neo, and the Handera 330. What the people at SPUG were waiting for, however, was a first-look at the Handspring Treo. The Treo is a three-in-one device that combines the power and functionality of the cell phone, a Palm-powered handheld, and a data communicator into one small package.

People who have wielded the Qualcomm PDQ or the Visor Phone will be shocked when they see the Treo. This GSM Palm-powered phone/handheld is really, really small. Placed next to my Palm Vx, the Treo was shorter, and less wide, though it was definitely thicker. Kudos to the industrial designers who designed the Treo. It’s remarkable how much they’ve packed into such a small form-factor.

There are two versions of the Treo 180. The Treo 180 comes with with a built-in keyboard ala Blackberry. The 180g comes with the now-familiar Graffiti silkscreen area. One has to presume that Handspring is targeting the mobile professional and enterprise market with the Treo 180. RIM’s Blackberry devices are very popular, but there isn’t much third-party software for it, compared with the thousands of applications available for Palm handhelds. Given my experience with the Blackberry 957, I would probably opt for the Treo 180 over the 180g. If I wanted to use Graffiti, I could install a third-party application that allowed me to write Graffiti directly onto the screen. The tiny keyboard on the Treo and a Blackberry works surprisingly well after only a few minutes of practice.

The Treo could become one of the first combo devices that hits it big in the marketplace. The device is as small and portable as the smallest Palm-powered handhelds. It’s a Palm, it’s a phone, it’s a data communicator. It works like a RIM device (minus the always-on connection). If the market’s ready, I think Handspring’s got a winner on its hands. Retail price with activation is expected to be $399.

Speaking of things that are coming out for $399, Apple recently released the iPod, an MP3 player that holds “1000 songs in your pocket.” The iPod shows that Apple isn’t afraid of getting into a market other than the desktop computer market. In fact, this is the first major push into another market since they cancelled the Newton in February, 1998. It’s an intriguing product that comes with a number of features not found in many MP3 players today, including:

• 5GB hard drive: 1000 songs, 100 albums!
• Firewire: For faster syncing and download speeds than USB.
• 32MB RAM: 20 minutes of skip-free music listening.
• 10 hours battery life: Recharges using the Firewire connection.
• Firewire-disk mode: The iPod can also act as a hard drive for storing documents.
• Interface: An interface that you can learn without reading a manual.

A. was showing his Arcos Jukebox, another hard-drive based MP3 player that comes in 6GB and 20GB flavors. The Arcos unit is larger, heavier, and more difficult to use than the iPod. Its download speeds are slower (30-40 times slower since it’s USB-based) and its battery life is worse than the iPod (three hours compared to 10 hours for the iPod). The only thing going for the Arcos Jukebox is that it’s cheaper. When you put up the pros and cons for the iPod and compare it to its competition, you can see that it might, just might be worth the $399. Of course, I’d love it if it were cheaper, but you can’t have everything now, can you?

After SPUG, I tried going to the Apple Store in Palo Alto to see the iPod in person, but I arrived minutes after they closed at 9:00 pm. I did see the unit from the window, but nothing beats holding one in your hand. Tonight, i did glimpse a merging of a handheld and a phone in the Handspring Treo. I’ll have to wait to see 1000 songs in my pocket until Saturday, when the product is released to the public.

November 7, 2001 Update: Some friends of mine at Palm got their iPods today from Apple! The unit is pretty slick, although it does attract smudges and fingerprints very easily. It’s also a little sharp along the top edges; I wonder why they couldn’t have smoothed the edges down a bit. Nevertheless, it’s a nice unit that’s got me wondering if I want to take the plunge to see if it can change the way I listen to my music. As always, we’ll see!

You can see more pictures of the Handspring Treo by clicking on the photogallery link below.