According to Unstrung, Palm has dropped some (and possibly all) of the team working on integrating WiFi into Treo smartphones. The company is looking for replacements.

Palm is late integrating WiFi into Treo product lines. The technology is only available as an add-on for a few Palm smartphones. The company has had difficulty overcoming Palm OS WiFi driver compatibility issues, and has taken the public position that WiFi poses an unpleasant tradeoff with battery life, and that it's not necessary due to new generation cellular data networks.

Meanwhile, Palm's competition - particularly in the Windows Mobile realm - has implemented the technology in a host of devices. WiFi is a popular smartphone feature in Europe because it allows consumers to circumvent European carriers' exorbitant data transfer rates.

The news of the layoffs comes at a time Palm has announced it will recapitalize its balance sheet with a cash infusion from an Elevation Capital 25% buyout of the firm, $400 million debt offering, and $9 per share return of capital to investors. Palm indicated that it would lay off people in a number of divisions but has not so far been specific about which ones.

"From our perspective," said the original source, "it would be fair to say their WiFi technical team was decimated."

Related Links

Palm WiFi Add On Card

Unstrung - Palm Drops WiFi Team?

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