Windows CE Surpassed Palm OS Shipments
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Microsoftâs Windows CE surpassed Palm OS shipments in worldwide PDA operating systems market in 3Q. Worldwide personal digital assistant (PDA) shipments exceeded 2.8 million units, as Microsoft Windows CE
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Blog: I understand 5.6 percent is not too significant, and the nation's top vendors are releasing Windows systems, but Apple's rise in market share has been unprecedented.
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Worldwide shipments of personal computers grew nearly 12 percent in the third quarter, driven by strong European sales and rising commercial demand, according to IDC, a research company that tracks shipments.    A PC shipments report released Monday by another firm, Gartner, Inc., reported quarterly growth of 9.7 percent, with lower-than-expected U.S...
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Worldwide shipments of personal digital assistants (PDAs) using Microsoft Corp.&#39;s Windows CE operating system have surpassed those using PalmSource Inc.
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CNET reports that PalmOne has evaluated versions of Microsofts Windows Mobile as well as Linux-based operating systems for use in its products.
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(InfoWorld) - Despite consumers' cool reaction to ultramobile PCs, Palm will launch a handheld computer called Foleo with a full keyboard and 10-inch screen. The product, announced Wednesday, seems to fly against Palm's own strategy of migrating away from PDAsÂ built around data entry to smartphones centered on voice operation. Hardware vendors can earn larger profits selling the more expensive smartphones, such as Palm's Treo, which have grown in popularity thanks to features like mobile e-mail. Now Palm hopes to ride the coattails of smartphone popularity by pitching the Foleo as a "smartphone companion product." Users would carry both devices in their pockets, synchronizing data between the platforms just as PDA users swap data with their PCs. "Smartphones will be the most prevalent personal computers on the planet, ultimately able to do everything that desktop computers can do," but at times users need a bigger screen and full-size keyboard, said Palm founder Jeff Hawkins in a statement. The 2.5-pound (1.13 kilogram) Foleo stays connected to its companion smartphone through a Bluetooth wireless link and supports Internet browsing with either its own Wi-Fi card or the smartphone's radio, Palm said. Together, the wireless networks will allow users to read their e-mail and office documents, such as Word and Excel, files on a large screen instead of a cramped phone display. The Foleo PC uses the Linux OS and is designed to synchronize with both the Palm OS and the Windows Mobile version of the Treo smartphone. However, Palm hopes to sell the Foleo to users of all types of smartphones, saying it can easily link to most smartphones based on Windows Mobile and requires a modest development effort to link to smartphones using operating systems from Research in Motion, Apple, or Symbian. By choosing the Linux OS, Palm is also encouraging software developers to create new applications for the platform. That decision could be a successful strategy, one analyst said. "Using the analogy of the OS as plumbing for the device, with Linux, all the plumbing is already developed, so it's easy to layer your own application on top of it," said Todd Kort, an analyst with Gartner. One drawback might be the proliferation of 10 or 20 different types of Linux flavors in the market, but several consortiums are tackling that problem by trying to define software standards, Kort said. Palm will also win some marketing buzz by being one of the first vendors to bring a Linux-based handheld PC to the U.S. Motorola and other vendors sell some comparable products in China and Japan but have not yet brought them to the U.S., Kort said. Palm will sell the Foleo in the U.S. this summer for $499 after an introductory $100 rebate.
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Microsoft overtook PalmSource in the third quarter as the world&#39;s biggest operating system for handheld computers, a survey showed Friday.
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(InfoWorld) - Even though major vendors have shifted their focus to expensive and profitable smartphones, shipments of PDAs jumped nearly 40 percent in the first quarter of 2007, according to a new survey. The result came from higher-than-expected customer demand for devices with GPS navigation and low-cost e-mail functions, according to a Gartner study released Tuesday. In recent quarters, hardware vendors like Research in Motion (RIM) and Palm have begun to move their product lines from PDAs to smartphones. That strategy took its toll in the first quarter with RIM shipping 0.2 percent fewer units than last year and Palm dropping out of the top five in market share. The vendors say that is exactly the result they wanted to see. In a quarterly earnings report in March, Palm said smartphone revenue rose from 28 percent in the third quarter of 2004 to 86 percent in the third fiscal quarter of 2007. Despite Palm's stance, other vendors still see an opportunity in PDAs. Mio Technology had a 162 percent rise in PDA shipments in the first quarter with particularly strong sales of its GPS-enabled car-navigation units in southern European countries, according to Gartner. Drivers there love GPS because they frequently cross borders on twisty roads marked in foreign tongues, said Gartner analyst Todd Kort. SamsungÂ followed a different path to PDA success, rising from 2,150 shipments last year to 451,000 units shipped in the first quarter of 2007 thanks to a strong marketing campaign for its BlackJack wireless e-mail device by Cingular Wireless. Mobile e-mail capability is attracting many companies and consumers to buy new handsets like the BlackJack and Motorola Q, Kort said. "The market is moving very strongly with wireless e-mail," Kort said. "That and GPS are the biggest drivers, compared to the old PDA stuff that drove the market five or six years ago, the contact lists and calendars that are available on almost any device now." Overall, the PDA market reached 5.1 million units shipped in the first quarter, up 39.7 percent over the same quarter last year, according to the Gartner study. RIM held onto its top position with 18.1 percent market share, topping Mio with 11.1 percent, Samsung with 8.8 percent, Sharp with 8.5 percent, and Nokia with 6.2 percent. As a measure of RIM's effort to shift its product line to smartphones, its lead of 7 percentage points was down sharply from 18.5 percentage points in the same quarter last year. Another effect of the decision by RIM and Palm to downplay the PDA market was to open the door for Microsoft to buttress its leading position in handset operating systems. Microsoft shipped 3.2 million units of Windows CE in the first quarter, a rise of 64.4 percent over the same time last year. Meanwhile, the RIM, Palm, and Linux OSes all lost share in that same year-over-year comparison, Gartner said. Windows CE led the PDA market with 62.1 percent market share, towering over the RIM OS at 18.1 percent, Palm OS at 6.1, Symbian at 5.6 percent, and Linux at 0.7 percent. Gartner defines a PDA as a data-first, voice-second device designed for use with both hands. That family does not include devices such as Palm's Treo 750 and the BlackBerry 8100 family, but does include cellular PDAs like the BlackBerry 8700. Nevertheless, despite Gartner's upbeat report on PDAs, other industry observers stress that handheld devices without any phone capabilities at all are losing the interest of users. IDC, for example, tracks what they call handheld devices, defined as pocket-sized computers that may have Internet access and text messaging, but do not support telephony. IDC sees evidence of a shift away from these types of PDAs, illustrated by Dell's decision to stop selling handheld devices entirely, according to IDC analyst Ramon Llamas. As consumer interest swings quickly from simple handsets to feature-rich smartphones, the first quarter of 2007 marked the 13th consecutive quarter of decline in shipments of PDAs with no telephone abilities, Llamas said.
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Plus: Adobe strong despite drop...Linux demand lifts Red Hat profit...Strong sales of phones, other gadgets boost PalmOne profit.
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(InfoWorld) - Palm plans to announce a new type of mobile device on Wednesday as it continues its product-line transition from simple PDAs to more advanced smartphones. Consumer electronics vendors are rushing to develop handsets that offer mobile e-mail and Internet browsing instead of merely calendars and contact lists. Apple added fuel to this fire in January when CEO Steve Jobs announced he would launch the iPhone in June, combining the iPod music player with a digital camera, smartphone, and touchscreen display. Now Palm is telling industry watchers that founder Jeff Hawkins will unveil the new device during his talk at a trade show in Carlsbad, California called D: All Things Digital. Palm is keeping quiet about the details, even declining to brief industry analysts ahead of the announcement. But one possibility is theÂ Linux-based smartphoneÂ that Palm CEO Ed Colligan has promised to release before the end of 2007. Such a device would improve performance compared to Palm's current Treo by running the Palm OS on top of a Linux kernel, Colligan told analysts at the company's annual investor day in April. Palm will also continue to use Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS. In the PDA segment,Â vendors used Windows on 62.1 percent of handsets in the first quarter of 2007, compared to just 0.7 percent for Linux, according to Gartner. By continuing to develop applications on both tracks, Palm hopes to win customers by offering them more options with its Treo smartphone than competitors like Research in Motion's BlackBerry, Motorola's Q, and Samsung's BlackJack. Another possibility for Palm is to re-architect its Treo into a more stylish, consumer-friendly device, said analyst Jack Gold, founder of the research firm J. Gold Associates. "They are being left behind by the likes of BlackBerry and Nokia and Moto as far as device design goes," Gold said. "I wouldn't be surprised to see a new navigation paradigm but not too far away form a standard phone. They don't want to lose their bread and butter clients, who are mostly business users who want an e-mail device."
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Windows Mobile gains momentum as handset makers rally to release first device based on updated OS.
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Microsoft Corp., worldâs largest software maker, increased its market shares of Windows CE, operating system for handheld devices, in the third quarter of this year, stated a research study conducted by Gartner, Inc.
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Higher-end Home version of the Microsoft OS appears in PCs sold in first week of Vista's availability.
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Worldwide shipments of personal digital assistants (PDAs) using Microsoft Corp.'s Windows CE operating system have surpassed those using PalmSource Inc.'s Palm OS for the first time, following a precipitous decline in Palm OS PDA shipments in the third quarter of 2004, according to research released Friday by industry analyst company Gartner Inc.
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The company says that in the most recent third quarter, the global market for handheld devices showed Microsoft&#39;s Windows Mobile Pocket PC platform accounting for nearly half the three million units shipped.
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Microsoft has unseated the Palm system with worldwide sales of more than 1.3 million units over the third quarter of the year, compared with slightly more than 850,000 for the Palm, according to a new report. -The Washington Post
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Two months after the heavily hyped release of Microsoft&#39;s Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), the company has exceeded its delivery projections for individual users and small businesses.