Ed Colligan on the PDA

Yesterday I attended the Digital Life exhibition in New York for the Palm Addict blog site to cover Palm’s press conference announcing the new Palm Centro smartphone.

While there I happened to get a minute with Ed Colligan, Palm’s CEO. Given Palm’s emphasis on smartphones, I asked Ed if Palm had any plans to discontinue its PDA line, especially the e-book friendly TX. Ed said No! He said that they haven’t paid too much attention to their PDAs recently because of the big opportunity in the phone area, but that Palm was number one in PDAs and he felt that there was a place for both. Good news for a lot of us who still love their TXs for such things as ebooks.

Ed was pretty distracted, what with everything else going on, but I pointed out to him that the Sony Reader is creating quite a splash in the e-book market and that his TX makes a perfect, really portable e-book reader. Further, I told him, the software is already developed, so no investment would be required to position this little machine for a new market. He didn’t say anything, but I hope he remembers our conversation when he gets a quiet moment.