At the ShowStoppers media event last night, I've chatted with i-mate CEO Jim Morrison (pictured) who's opening its first US office in Redmond, Washington. Not really a surprise as the cell phone maker is a Windows Mobile only shop. But more unusual, i-mate's hardware design is done in tax-free heaven Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, where the company also has its headquarters, and then sent to Taiwan and China for manufacturing. i-mate enjoys a good following in the Middle East with phones supporting Arabic, the Islamic calendar, etc.
However, i-mate recently got a rough ride since the beginning of the year, when its former manufacturing partner, the Taiwanese HTC, decided to go direct to the consumers and banned i-mate to resell its smartphones under its brand. Forcing ithe Dubai company to reduce by half the number of new phones launched this year (from 16 to 8).
To differentiate itself from the HTCs of the world, i-mate focuses on high-end devices with 3G/GPS/WiFi/etc functionalities. If the phones are not subsidised, their cost range from $500 to $800. Morrison also points to the company 24/7 professional tech support and personalisation/customisation services.

Moreover, our colleagues at UberGizmo have also learned that i-mate plans to create a “shell”(pictured) that would feature a 1024x768 display (7 inch?), a keyboard and a battery that can last (up to) 80 hours, turning the Ultimate smart phones into a comfortably sized PDA powerful enough to do serious productivity work, yet much smaller and lighter than a laptop. If you need to, you can also remote control your home/office PC with Remote Desktop.

However, there’s a price to this. Expect the “shell” to cost around $300 in addition to the $600-$800 of the Smartphone itself. It’s a little expensive, but for someone who mainly does email and who really cares about portability, that might sound pretty good.

In short, that’s the Foleo done right. Unlike the Foleo, the i-mate “shell” doesn’t contain any processing units or memory – that’s why it will be much cheaper.