Palm CEO Ed Colligan announced Tuesday in the company’s official blog that Palm was suspending development of the Foleo to better concentrate on a single new smart phone platform. Earlier this year Palm announced the Foleo, billed as a smart phone companion, but it appears now the device will never make it into customer hands.

The Foleo offered a 10-inch screen, full size keyboard, WiFi, and Linux in a ultra-small laptop configuration. It was intended to work as a wireless addon to smart phones by offering laptop-like features that aren’t available on handheld devices. The Foleo was slated to be released sometime during the Summer of 2007.

"In the course of the past several months, it has become clear that the right path for Palm is to offer a single, consistent user experience around this new platform design and a single focus for our platform development efforts," Mr. Colligan wrote. "To that end, and after careful deliberation, I have decided to cancel the Foleo mobile companion product in its current configuration and focus all of our energies on delivering out next generation platform and the first smart phones that will bring this platform to market."

The company plans to continue developing products for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform along with devices based on its own platform.

Mr. Colligan added that his company wasn’t abandoning the Foleo. "Jeff Hawkins and I still believe that the market category defined by Foleo has enormous potential. When we do Foleo II it will be based on our new platform, and we think it will deliver on the promise of this new category. We’re not going to speculate now on timing for a next Foleo, we just know we need to get our core platform and smart phones done first."

The decision will require the company take a one-time charge of US$10 million against its earnings.