PDA Sales Continue to Drop
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If a handheld device doesn&#39;t have voice capabilities, a growing number of users around the world aren&#39;t interested, according to IDC.
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Budget competition from other consumer electronics devices is among factors lowering sales estimates.
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Worldwide shipments of personal digital assistants declined for the third straight year, according to a new report.
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New Windows Mobile alternative Apple's iPhone is going to hit Palm hard, a US analyst has forecast. Research in Motion's consumer-friendly BlackBerry Curve will harm the PDA pioneer too, Piper Jaffray wireless hardware analyst T Michael Walkley claimed this week.â¦
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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
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With PDA sales slumping, company is planning new devices.
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The former World Class product-of-the-year PDA gets a much-needed upgrade.
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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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Sharp Electronics plans to stop selling its Linux-based personal digital assistant (PDA) in the US, reports Associated Press. The company will continue to
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Record sales, but numbers still down Palm is still losing money, despite the Centro selling in record numbers (for Palm). The company lost $9.6m in the three months to 30 November, on revenues which are down 11 per cent on last year to $349 million.â¦
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RIM still the world's largest PDA vendor, thanks to swelling demand for wireless e-mail, according to a market report.
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For the third straight quarter, shipments of handheld devices fell as some prominent vendors decided to pull back from the market, according to research firm IDC.
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The chip maker lowers estimates again on weak demand from consumers. Is this strike three?
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If a handheld device doesn't have voice capabilities, a growing number of users around the world aren't interested, according to IDC. For the third straight quarter, shipments of handheld devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) fell as some prominent vendors decided to pull back from the market, IDC said Wednesday.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard unveiled late on Wednesday five new iPaq handheld devices, two 3G mobile phones, a GPS device it calls a personal navigation device, and two traditional PDAs, without cellular connectivity. [ View slideshow: HP delivers five new iPaqs ] The 910 and 610 use the Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 Professional operating system.                                                     Although the PDA market has been shrinking quarter over quarter for several years now, converged mobile devices (PDAs that include Wi-Fi and cellular) are seeing robust growth, according to Ramon Llamas, a senior analyst with IDC. "These are mini computers and for some it is a necessary enterprise device," Llamas said. Although pricing is not yet firm, the 5.15-ounce iPaq 910 will sell for about $599 and will include four separate radios, a quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and tri-band UMTS cellular chip, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth, and a GPS radio for navigation. For business users, the 910 includes a full QWERTY keyboard, Windows Mobile applications, and the Enterprise Mobility Suite, which is a set of hosted management applications. It also includes software compatible with Cisco's unified communications protocols, CCX (Cisco Compatibility Extensions). The display is a 2.46-inch TFT screen. The iPaq 610 is also a converged device. It features four radios, including the quad-band cellular found in the 910. The major difference between the two devices is the 2.8-inch rectangular display, more suited for Web browsing and GPS. But the 610 lacks the QWERTY keyboard of the 910. The iPaq 310, dubbed the Travel Companion, is a trip planner and a PDA as opposed to an enterprise device. It features only two radios, GPS, and Bluetooth, and it runs on Windows CE 5.0. The 6.6-ounce device has a 4.3-inch display and 128MB of SDRAM. GPS software gives user turn-by-turn directions with spoken word as well as on-screen display. Price is expected to be between $399 and $449. The HP iPaq 210 model is dubbed Enterprise Handheld and includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It does not include a cellular radio or a GPS radio. Memory is 64MB, and it comes with Office Mobile, Outlook, IE Mobile, and Windows Media Player Mobile. The iPaqe 210 is priced around $400 and uses Windows Mobile 6 Classic as the OS. Finally, the iPaq 110 is HP's least expensive device, priced at about $200. Dubbed the Classic handheld, the 110 includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth with a smaller 3.5-inch screen. Included is the same 210 application software. The iPaq 910 and 610 will keep HP in the hot converged device market game. However, holding the No. 2 market share spot in the dying handheld market -- defined by IDC as traditional PDAs without connectivity -- may be somewhat meaningless, especially given that Dell, the fourth-place market share leader, has dropped out. Traditional handhelds are a shrinking market, Llamas said.
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(InfoWorld) - The global chip market is suffering from falling prices in microprocessors and memory chips, bad news for companies but great for users. Steep declines in DRAM (dynamic RAM) for PCs and NAND flash memory, used in a variety of gadgets including digital cameras and iPods, as well as microprocessors prompted the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) to slash its global sales forecast for this year to US$252 billion, just 1.8 percent growth compared to last year. The previous estimate called for sales growth of 10 percent this year. Sales of gadgets themselves are on track to meet forecasts, however, SIA said. Chip shipments overall remain healthy, as does end-user demand. But prices continue to fall for a variety of reasons, including a glut in the memory market and a price war between Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. in microprocessors. "End markets continue to be strong, with consumers realizing major benefits from lower chip prices coupled with ever-increasing performance and functionality from advances in chip technology. Despite a forecast of slower growth, we expect that global sales of microchips will surpass last yearâs record level," the SIA said in a statement on Wednesday. Intel and AMD have been battling each other through price reductions for over a year now, and reports indicate that Intel will cut prices on some microprocessors again in late July. The price war has been good to consumers, delivering more technically advanced microprocessors at a lower cost. Microprocessors are generally the most expensive chip inside a PC. The DRAM market has been hit the worst. The price of mainstream 512M-bit second-generation double data rate (DDR2) DRAM that runs at 667MHz has plunged 72 percent so far this year to US$1.79 per chip, according to DRAMeXchange Technology Inc., a Taiwanese clearinghouse for the chips. The market research division of the company has noted that the chips appear to be bottoming out, and that prices could tick up a bit later this month. DRAM price reductions for users normally come a few weeks or a month after the spot DRAM market falls. NAND Flash memory has suffered a similar fate as DRAM, but not quite as steep a decline. A glut of the chips early in the year has been wiped out by memory makers, which tweaked production lines to make more DRAM instead of NAND flash. Prices of 8G byte NAND has fallen 18 percent his year to US$9.26, according to DRAMeXchange, while the 4G byte capacity has dropped nearly 15 percent to US$5.69. The SIA expects PC and mobile phone sales to rise 10 percent each this year. Mobile phone sales may give chips a bigger boost, however, because users are buying more 3G (third generation communications) handsets, which contain more chips than older phones. Sales of personal media players and digital music players are expected to grow by more than 20 percent this year, SIA said, but noted that price competition in the market will likely keep NAND flash chip prices tame. The SIA report followsÂ a similar estimation of the global chip industry by Gartner. A few weeks ago, the market researcher lowered its forecast to just 2.5 percent growth to US$269.2 billion this year, down from an earlier estimate of 6.4 percent. Â ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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Applied Micro Circuits Corp., a communications chip maker, on Thursday said it expects lower second-quarter revenue compared to its first quarter, based on soft sales in Asia and lower orders.