One the surface, the iPhone and Palm's just announced Foleo don't appear to have much in common. The former merges an iPod with a phone and more, while the latter looks like a mini-laptop, and is a device Palm hopes will lead to a new product line, mobile companions, that'll work in conjunction with smartphones, perhaps even the iPhone.

One way to look at Foleo, which sports a large screen and full-size keyboard, is as a smartphone peripheral on steroids. Even so, whether it'll find a market or, as Palm insists, there's a market already waiting for it, remains to be seen. Overall, the buzz for Foleo, since Palm co-founder Jeff Hawkins introduced it a couple of days ago, has not been good. The obvious question is: What, yet another device to carry around?

Foleo arrives with basically two functions: To allow smartphone owners to access e-mail and the Web with a much larger screen and keyboard, and to have e-mail automatically synchronized between the two devices.

Otherwise, Foleo is pretty much a blank slate waiting to be expanded upon by outsiders. Palm these developers will bring out the device’s full potential, something Apple doesn't need for the iPhone.

Nonetheless, contrary to previous statements, it appears Apple will open up the iPhone to third-parties anyway. At theThe Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital conference, Steve Jobs all but said Apple would eventually allow outside development, during a sit-down with the The Journal's tech-guru Walt Mossberg. It turns out security concerns were Apple's main reason for originally giving third-party application development the cold shoulder, at least that's what Jobs asserted.

Mossberg asked: "All indications appear that the iPhone is closed, we'd love to develop apps..."

Jobs replied: "This is an important tradeoff between security and openness. We want both. We're working through a way... we'll find a way to let third-parties write apps and still preserve security on the iPhone. But until we find that way we can't compromise the security of the phone. I've used third-party apps... the more you add, the more your phone crashes. No one's perfect, and we'd sure like our phone not to crash once a day. If you can just be a little more patient with us I think everyone can get what they want."

Allowing third-party software development is a prerequisite, some say, for a mobile handset to be considered smartphone. While the iPhone could very well change that, all the major smartphone platforms (e.g. Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian, RIM BlackBerry, etc.) allow for a community of developers to create software.

Because of this, consumers have access to all sorts of software - for work, play, lifestyle etc. - for most smartphones today. If Apple follows through and opens the iPhone up, there’s no reason to believe Jobs and company, not to mention consumers could benefit in the same manner.

Also, while the iPhone is viewed almost exclusively as a consumer device, that could change. Enterprises may become interested in deploying them. Far stranger things have happened. Should this start to happen, it would help the iPhone's chances in the broader business market if corporate America could develop its own in-house software for the device.

Palm Opens Foleo
Foleo, the notebook computer-like inaugural product in Palm's new mobile companion line, may have generated more huhs than wows—the opposite of January's iPhone introduction—but I think Palm has the right idea by bringing over the third-party software model it basically invented with the original PalmPilot (and that's lead to over 25,000 Palm OS applications) to the Linux OS-run device.

In fact, the most interesting thing about the Foleo could be its Linux OS, which some speculate could lead to an increase in open source software development in the mobile space.

Palm plans to ship the software development kit (SDK) for Foleo about when the device first becomes available this summer.

No matter what your first impression of the mobile companion product is, skeptical or not, perhaps you'll be pleasantly surprised should its utility expand due to the creativity of developers, carving out a niche for Folio far wider than Palm originally intended.

At $499, the ultra-slim, 2.5-pound device today has a pretty narrow window from which to attract customers. It targets those who don't require the full power of laptop but would still like a large screen and full keyboard when reading, editing and responding to e-mail, including attachments, and accessing the Web than is possible directly through a smartphone.

During the webcast introducing the mobile companion, Hawkins said Foleo was "conceived of five years ago," but it didn't make sense then. Palm basically had to wait until the smartphone market matured and the devices themselves became suitable for what Hawkins had in mind, which was to develop a device that enhanced a smartphone's capabilities.

The full-size keyboard defines Foleo's footprint, as having a typer any smaller would defeat the whole concept behind the device. Hawkins believes Foleo is the smallest device with a full-size keyboard.