Palm hopes new PDA will boost business

SMARTPHONE MAKER Palm believes the launch of its new Treo Pro will help it to double its business in Ireland this year.

SMARTPHONE MAKER Palm believes the launch of its new Treo Pro will help it to double its business in Ireland this year.

The once dominant maker of personal digital assistants (PDAs) is betting that the Treo Pro can win market share from the Blackberry e-mail devices beloved by executives in Europe and the US.

It runs Windows Mobile rather than the Palm OS, which is undergoing a major revamp before it reappears next year. Palm's Irish sales manager, Kieran O'Toole, points to Gartner research which shows that over 80 per cent of European businesses have at least one Windows Mobile device, while just over 50 per cent have a Blackberry.

Mr O'Toole concedes its current business model, the Treo 750, has an "industrial look and feel" compared to its competitors, but he believes the sleek design of the Pro will win over customers.

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With its curved black case, the Treo Pro looks good but it also has significantly enhanced features over its predecessor. Wi-Fi networking and GPS navigation are built-in while the Treo Pro now has a touchscreen rather than relying on its compact Qwerty keyboard for navigation and input.

Other enhancements have improved battery life with Mr O'Toole saying it can easily deliver a full working day between charges.

Traditionally a Vodafone partner, the Treo Pro is the first Palm that will launch simultaneously with both O2 and Vodafone.

Mr O'Toole conceded that the Blackberry was so embedded in certain sectors - including finance and legal - that it will be nigh impossible to dislodge. But he believes firms only now beginning to look at "push e-mail" products will consider the Treo Pro, particularly because it uses the latest Windows Mobile 6.1 which provides remote management capabilities for IT departments.

An IT industry veteran, Mr O'Toole was first hired by Palm as a consultant to analyse the Irish market. He concluded that Palm "was grossly under represented but there was significant potential to increase its market share".

Separately, Blackberry maker Research in Motion moved to increase its market share this week with the launch of its first model with a flip-down keyboard, the Pearl Flip 8220.