CARLSBAD, Calif., May 30 — Fifteen years after pioneering personal computers that nestled comfortably in a user’s hand, Palm reversed itself Wednesday and said that it would begin selling a two-handed laptop-size machine called the Foleo.
The 2.5-pound “appliance” comes with a 10-inch screen and is meant to be a companion for a smartphone, according to one of Palm’s founders, Jeff Hawkins, who introduced the machine here at the D: All Things Digital technology industry conference.
The Foleo, which will be priced starting at $499, synchronizes information with Palm and Windows Mobile phones and can be linked wirelessly via phones to the Internet, although it comes with Wi-Fi ability.
During a demonstration, Mr. Hawkins acknowledged the limitations of smartphones, which have been viewed as a lighter, less expensive alternative to carrying a portable laptop computer. “Sometimes you need a big screen,” Mr. Hawkins said.
He said he had struck on the idea of a mobile companion for the phone five years ago, but that his business partners Donna Dubinsky and Ed Colligan had resisted the project as a distraction while the company introduced the popular Treo smartphones.
The Foleo, which will go on sale this summer, is based on the Linux operating system. But it does not have a broad range of applications. For example, while Mr. Hawkins demonstrated the ability to synchronize e-mail automatically with a smartphone, synchronizing with a datebook was not a feature.
The notion of an inch-thick device that is sold as a peripheral to a phone generated some skepticism. But several analysts saidt the phone might get a following of Linux enthusiasts.
“This could become the first commercially viable portable Linux system,” said Tim Bajarin, an industry analyst at Creative Strategies, a consulting firm based in Campbell, Calif.
The Foleo is the latest in a series of industry efforts to define a new category between cellphones and laptops. Microsoft has tried to create interest in devices it calls ultra-mobile PCs, and Intel has been encouraging developers to introduce systems it describes as mobile Internet devices.
Several smaller start-up companies like Oqo, based in San Francisco, have also been offering hand-held systems that have most of the features of standard laptops, but fit comfortably in jacket pockets.
This year’s conference also included an interview with Apple’s chief executive, Steven P. Jobs. Mr. Jobs said his company would soon be focused on three business — computers, digital music, and cellular telephone handsets — and “a hobby,” the company’s recently introduced Apple TV peripheral.
He called the device an experiment and said it would soon make it possible to download videos from the YouTube site of Google onto a home TV.
He described efforts by PC and consumer electronics companies and others to replace the cable set-top box as failures. Apple has recently reset its strategy and is going to try to shape Apple TV as something other than a conduit for television.
“We want to be the DVD player for the Internet age,” he said.
Mr. Jobs also said that more than two hundred million copies of the Apple iTunes software had been downloaded, with most of them running on Windows-based personal computers.
He did not let that fact pass without taking a not-so-subtle jab at his long-time competitor, Bill Gates, Microsoft’s founder: Offering iTunes software to Windows users was like “offering a glass of water to someone in hell,” Mr. Jobs said.
