Rumor has it that the release of the Palm Treo 700w could just be a few weeks away. In fact Palm has actually acknowledged that the device’s name, at least the Verzion model that will be launched initially, is indeed the Treo 700w.
Next to the BlackBerry, the Treo is probably the second most recognizable PDA / Mobile Phone / Wireless email device and is widely popular among individual consumers as compared to the corporate and government dominance of the BlackBerry. The Treo 700w has features that are noticeably lacking on BlackBerry devices such as a SDslot for external memory and hardware expansion cards, a 1 mega-pixel digital camera, and the ability to play MP3s.
Research in Motion has recently updated the BlackBerry homepage and has clearly separated the site into a business section for corporations and an individual section for consumers. One can only assume that RIM wants to take share away from Palm on the consumer side of things. If we are lucky, we will start to see some of these additional features present on most non-BlackBerry devices on a consumer grade BlackBerry where corporate security isn’t as great a concern.