The new Treo 850 or Treo Pro is the slickest looking Treo to date. Engadget has the scoop with photos to boot. From a design point of view, this new Palm is heads and tales better than the tired looking traditional Treo. It resembles the new Blackberry Bold, with traces of an iPhone. Lord knows Palm could use a smartphone hit. They’ve been trampled by RIM and Apple lately. The Treo 850 is believed to be a Windows Mobile device and will offer Wi-Fi and a 400 MHz processor with 100 MB of RAM. I’ve always had a sweet spot for Palm, being one of the first on “my block” with a Treo 600. I traded it up to the Treo 700, but got a little tired of it and moved on to the HTC/Sprint Mogul. Now I’m getting a little tired of that, and this new Treo 850 looks enticing. Let’s hope it’s more than just looks, for my and Palm’s sake.

Once the domain of RIM’s BlackBerry and Palm’s Treo, the corporate smartphone segment is about to get a new player - the Apple iPhone Enterprise. Apple announced several initiatives to make the iPhone more corporate IT friendly, with the hopes of dramatically expanding the iPhone’s reach beyond the consumer segment. The move is all a part of the so called iPhone 2.0 Software initiative, which also involves a new iPhone software development kit (SDK) for third party developers. Apple will encourage application development for the iPhone and will open an iPhone store for the distribution of third party applications. On the enterprise side, the iPhone will now support Microsoft Exchange, the widely used corporate email platform, and allow for “push” email capability, and calendar and contacts synchronization. Additionally, iPhone software 2.0 also supports Cisco IPsec VPNs and WPA2 Enterprise with 802.1x authentication — the standard for Wi-Fi network security. Apple will use Microsoft’s ActiveSync Direct Push technology, and hopes that the new applications, combined with employee requests for iPhone support, will push corporate IT departments to adopt it as a corporate smartphone option.

Apple will have some difficulty. The enterprise smartphone sector is ruled by RIM’s BlackBerry, and to a lesser extent, Palm’s Treo line. Corporate IT departments have never been known to enthusiastically embrace new options like the Apple iPhone. In their eyes, the iPhone’s cool design and form are meaningless. It’s just one more piece of hardware and software to get up to speed on, troubleshoot, and train “clueless” staff on. Many of them will say no thank you, at least initially. They will argue that the BlackBerry is meeting their needs just fine, “thank you very much.” I could be proven wrong. I suspect that many of the folks running IT departments already have either iPhones or an iPod or two. They may already be under Apple’s spell, and consequently more open to supporting the iPhone, than say one from Nokia. Of course the iPhone’s limited carrier reach due to its exclusivity with AT&T limits its appeal as well. Whatever the case, Apple’s making a case for the enterprise and taking on some pretty well entrenched competitors. It will be interesting to watch.

The FCC has approved a BlackBerry device with Wi-Fi access. PhoneScoop reports that the approved device operates in the GSM/EDGE 850/1900 profile and will operate in the Wi-Fi spectrum ranges of 5.4 Ghz, 5.8 Ghz and 2.4 Ghz range, providing 802.11a/b/g coverage. RIM CEO has said that they intend to launch a Wi-Fi capable BlackBerry device by the end of 2007.

BlackBerry realizes in order to keep their wireless carrier partners competitive, they had to offer a Wi-Fi BlackBerry. The list of smartphones with Wi-Fi access is growing, incuding Apple’s iPhone, and a variety of HTC devices which work on the at&t wireless, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless networks. A conspicuously absent player from this list is the Palm Treo.

Despite its success, some are wondering whether the venerable Blackberry device is losing its luster. Competitors including Windows Mobile and Symbian devices, as well as Palm’s Treo line have long had a ‘bulls eye’ on RIM’s flagship product. Add to that the competitive implications of the iPhone, which seems to be seducing the masses already, despite not having sold one copy yet. RIM does have some disadvantages compared with their competitors, including the necessity for enterprise users to implement an additional mail server, with all of the support issues that generates. RIM of course thinks differently, and can point to their 8 million subscribers as evidence to counter premature predictions of their demise.

Check out this Silicon.com post for more analysis.