While Palm said that the Windows Mobile-based Treo 700w, released last April, was aimed primarily at the enterprise, Sinclair said the Treo 700p also will be attractive to enterprises. Besides the ability to connect directly to Exchange Server 2003, the added RAM means that enterprise users can open large attachments with the device, Sinclair said.
"We're not giving up on the enterprise with Palm OS devices," he said. "We have many enterprise customers whose users love the Palm OS and don't want to move away. It's an open platform, so we have solutions that make it easy to integrate (the Palm OS) into an enterprise environment.
Sinclair said the older Palm OS Treo 650 is still being manufactured and could be offered by cellular operators at a lower price than the 700p. PalmSource, which develops the Palm OS, has said it is transitioning the operating system to Linux. Palm executives have said that more versions of the Treo are expected later this year, but have refused to disclose whether any of those new Treos would be based on Linux.
Palm claims the Treo is in second place in the smartphone race in the U.S. behind Research In Motion's BlackBerrys. Besides competing with BlackBerry, Palm faces daunting competition worldwide from smartphones from Nokia, which is generally credited with being the leading smartphone vendor worldwide.
