Palm officially discontinued the LifeDrive last week, a product that never quite took off. Priced at $500, there never was a clear demographic for the LifeDrive. I suppose at that price point, it was aimed towards business users looking for a laptop replacement. One of the bigger selling points for the LifeDrive were the multimedia capabilities (Photos and Music), nice features, but not necessarily something that jives with the target audience. Business users looking to replace their laptop are looking primarily at contact management, organizing their calendar and the ability to edit Office documents. Many of the features were already available in the Palm Treo, plus the Treo is also a phone. We are in a day and age of convergence, where people are looking to carry one device. The LifeDrive featured a hard drive, robust multimedia capabilities, email, WiFi and a beautiful large screen. Add phone capabilies and this sounds strikingly similar to a product being released in June from a small company in Cupertino. For those who haven’t heard (and you must have been sequestered in the Big Brother house), Apple is releasing the iPhone in June of this year exclusively through Cingular Wireless.
The iPhone features email, Wifi, multimedia and features a stunning large LCD screen. Oh by the way, it’s a phone too. By all accounts, the iPhone will be a popular device and may very well reshape the landscape of the smartphone market. While many manufacturers will be scrambling to develop similar products, Palm should look to bring some of the features of the now extinct LifeDrive to the line of Palm Treo smartphones. The iPhone won’t be everything to everybody, but it has already stirred up what has in some respects become a stagnant market. Unlike most companies, Palm already has much of the technology to expand their Treo lineup. For today, we say goodbye to the LifeDrive, but how long will it be until we see its reincarnation in the form of a new Treo.
