Sharp exits US PDA market
191980
Sharp Electronics plans to stop selling its Linux-based personal digital assistant (PDA) in the US, reports Associated Press. The company will continue to
687360
Microsoft's Windows platform is losing traction as a target for application developers in North America.
687369
Handheld maker says it will close down its Palm.Net wireless e-mail and Web service soon.
18219
Sharp Electronics Corp. plans to stop selling its Linux-based handheld computer in the United States, another sign of the slowing market for personal digital assistants.
627338
Japanese electronics maker Sharp Corp. plans to start shipping a new touchscreen liquid crystal display with scanner functions for mobile electronic devices this September, the company said Friday.
49771
This manufacturing company replaces a lot of large, high-speed printers in the factory and decides to lease instead of buy. One key requirement: They must be PostScript compatible.
723018
Palm Inc. has canceled plans to release a laptop-like gadget that was supposed to serve as a smart-phone companion, months after the product was announced and ridiculed by analysts.
572522
The one-time World Class Product of the Year PDA gets a much-needed upgrade.
257430
Research in Motion Ltd. held onto its spot as the world's largest PDA (personal digital assistant) vendor, thanks to swelling demand for wireless e-mail, according to a market report released Tuesday.
96847
Electronics retailer trims guidance as Americans curb spending.
666809
- The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) on  Wednesday slashed its forecast for 2007 global microchip sales  growth citing a decline in the average selling prices in  several key market segments.
506302
(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.
682982
Sharp Corp., which helped propel the market for liquid-crystal display televisions, is no longer the world's leading maker of the flat-panel TVs, according to two market research companies.
595549
JAPANESE GIANT Sharp has pulled the plug on its Linux-based PDAs in the United States as no-one seems to want them. The company said that it will continue to sell them in Japan where they sell like hot cakes
342046
Microsoft has lost a patent battle in South Korea concerning input mode technology in its Office software. The decision could force the Redmond company to halt sales of the popular productivity suite in that country, but it is fighting back.
347731
Launches a BlackBerry alternative too Smart phone seller i-mate has launched its latest Windows Mobile handhelds: a follow up to the QWERTY keyboard equipped JAQ it launched a few months ago, and a classic tablet-like PDA phone squeezed into a candybar form-factor.â¦
372968
US regulator spills beans Mobile phone network O2 is preparing what appears to be a mid-range Windows Mobile 5.0-based PDA phone, made not by its new XDA partner, Asus, but by Quanta.â¦