ZDNet Video Interview with Ed Colligan

David Berlind, writer for ZDNet.com, has posted a video interview with Palm CEO Ed Colligan to his blog, discussing both Palm’s new Centro smartphone and their cancelled Linux-based Foleo subnotebook.

The interview questions consist of a mix of predictable and interesting topics, with Colligan doing most of the talking and issuing the anticipated responses to most questions. Some of the topics addressed during the interview by Colligan include the Centro targeting cheap featurephone competition as well as the fact that all of the various forms of smartphones comprise only “5%” of the market’s annual sales. The low price point of the Centro is attributed to Palm “doing it in partnership” with Sprint with no mention of cost-reduced component integration, specification reduction, or reduced margins on the device from Palm.

I did notice two more interesting observations from watching the full interview. The first was the fact that Colligan casually mentions the iPhone in the same breath as the Treo line and RIM’s BlackBerry devices in regards to competing smartphones on the market. Within the textual area of Berlind’s blog post he mentions the fact that he is wary of crash-prone smartphones and has been considering regressing to a less-complex device such as the Centro. Despite claiming to know Ed Colligan from back in his days at Radius Corp., Mr. Berlind should be forewarned that the same version of the Garnet OS 5.4.9 is present on both the Centro and Palm’s recent Treo 755p. So the Centro will likely, for better or worse, exhibit identical stability, quirks, and performance to its older sibling device.