Microsoft Takes Lead in PDA Shipments
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SAN JOSE, Calif. &#151; Microsoft Corp.'s software platform for personal digital assistants took over the market lead from PalmSource Inc. for the first time in the third quarter, according to market research released Friday.
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A version of the Windows operating system designed for small devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) (or Handheld PCs in the Microsoft vernacular).
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The latest version of Microsoft's mobile platform blurs the line between smartphones and connected PDAs.
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Microsoft Corp.  said it expects  sales of its Windows Mobile program in the Asia-Pacific region  to jump by over 75 percent in the business year to June, helped  by closer ties with wireless carriers and device makers.
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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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PC shipments grew between nearly 10 and 12 percent in the third quarter, paced by shipments to enterprise organizations, according to announcements from two market-research firms on Tuesday.
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(InfoWorld) - For business users who want Microsoft Office on their cell phones, Windows Mobile 6, the upcoming version of Redmond's mobile operating system to be unveiled next week, will be a must-have upgrade. Mobile 6 comes with mobile versions of Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. With the continuing increase in sales of smartphones at the expense of handheld devices, Office makes a lot of sense, especially for synchronizing with desktop files, according to Rob Enderle, principal at the Enderle Group. Carriers and handset manufacturers who believe they can put the limited memory and storage to better use, however, are out of luck. Microsoft Office still comes with Mobile 6. According to John Starkwether, a product manager in the Mobile and Embedded Devices Division at Microsoft, Office is part of the package. Starkwether conjectured that if a vendor really wants to exclude Office from the operating system, an accommodation might be possible. Additional upgrades to the mobile OS include Microsoft's Direct Push Technology with automatic synchronization of Outlook calendars, tasks, and contacts using Exchange Server. For security and management, Mobile 6 will also give mobile network managers the capability of remotely wiping out all data from a device should it be lost or stolen. Other security features include certificate options and storage card encryption. Business users will also be pleased with the inclusion of mobile versions of the .Net Compact Framework and SQL Server in order to access a company's standard line of business applications remotely. The Office applications are the most robust to date for the limited capacities of a cell phone. Spell checking in Word, though, is not included. E-mail viewing will be easier on the eye with formatting, tables, and pictures viewable as originally generated. One-click options for e-mail, such as "reply all", moving a message to a subfolder and "delete" have been added to accommodate the restricted functionality of a small device. Windows Vista users on the desktop will be able to swap music, pictures, movies and Outlook information between the Vista PC and the mobile device. Windows Live will integrate mail, messenger, search, contacts, and spaces. Call history is now placed inside the individual contact card. Enderle said that although there was "a lot of great stuff" in Mobile 6 Microsoft still has to focus on ease of use. "Compared to the Apple iPhone with its simplified interface, Mobile 6 is still complex to use," Enderle said. Devices with Windows Mobile 6 will ship worldwide in the second quarter.
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Exploring PDA 'transmission technologies', apparently
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(InfoWorld) - Research in Motion held onto its spot as the world's largest PDA vendor thanks to swelling demand for wireless e-mail, according to a market report released Tuesday. RIM shipped more than 1.8 million BlackBerry handhelds in the fourth quarter, pushing its total 2006 PDA shipments up 10 percent over last year to 3.5 million, according to Gartner. Despite its success, RIM's shipments grew more slowly than the overall market rate of 18.4 percent and much more slowly than smaller competitors like Mio Technology, up 112.1 percent on sales of its global positioning system-enabled devices, and Sharp, up 166.2 percent on sales of its Sidekick. The biggest losers in the industry were Palm, whose PDA shipments dropped 29 percent, and Hewlett-Packard, which dropped 24.1 percent. RIM still dominates the industry with 19.8 percent market share, but the other four vendors are now locked in a tight race, all claiming shipments between 1.4 million and 1.9 million units. Palm ranks second with 11.1 percent share, followed by HP with 9.7 percent, Mio with 8.5 percent, and Sharp with 8 percent. One reason for the shift is that RIM has been migrating its product mix from PDAs to smartphones, lead by the success of its BlackBerry Pearl, Gartner analyst Todd Kort said in the report. That trend applies to the entire market, too, as PDA vendors included cellular connectivity in 60 percent of their products in 2006, up from 47 percent in 2005. Gartner defines a PDA as a data-centric device that may offer voice communication but focuses on features like instant on/off and synchronizing files with a PC. The segment includes cellular PDAs, such as RIM's BlackBerry 87xx, but excludes smartphones, such as the BlackBerry 81xx and Palm's Treo 750. Inside those PDAs, Microsoft's Windows CE was both the most popular OS and the fastest growing. Designers used Windows CE in 56.1 percent of all PDAs in 2006, an increase of 38.8 percent from 2005. RIM's OS held a distant second place with 19.8 percent of the market, while the Palm OS lost nearly one-third of its platforms and held onto just 11.7 percent share. At the bottom of the market, fourth-place Symbian slumped to 5.4 percent share, and Linux rose to 0.9 percent.
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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¦
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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 on Friday.
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NOVEMBER 05, 2004  - A Microsoft Corp. vice president this week confirmed that the company intends to continue its track record of shipping a new version of its Office System software every two to three years.
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Worldwide shipments of personal computers rose strongly in the second quarter due to growing demand in Asia and unexpected strength in the U.S., two research companies reported Wednesday.
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Microsoft led the market in the third quarter for operating systems used in personal digital assistants, surpassing for the first time the Palm OS that dominated the handheld-computer segment for years.
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Microsoft appears to have won the battle to dominate the enterprise market segment for PDA and mobile OS makers, which is expected to show continued modest growth.
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No. 1 software maker&#39;s new line-up features built-in fingerprint readers to make logging on easier. SEATTLE  - Microsoft Corp.
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Microsoft has a firm grip on the handheld software market, winning the lead in shipments for the first time, a new report from Gartner shows.