Smartphone continues to outpace PDA
A new report from research firm Gartner shows: During the first half of 2006, shipments of PDAs and smartphones grew 57 percent over the same period in 2005, totaling 42.1 million units. 34.7 million of those were smartphones, with the remainder PDAs.
Only North America, which is the only region where PDA’s are still outsold smartphones. In fact, North America accounted for 45 percent of worldwide PDA shipments during the first half of 2006. I think mainly the USA market is shared between 2 standard CDMA and GSM. While GSM phones can use the same SIM card on any GSM compatible unlocked phone, The CDMA phones in general are sold and subsidized exclusively by carriers (Sprint, Verizon), who take enormous delay to make new models available to consumers. On the flip side, Japan prefers smartphones more than any other region, accounting for 33 percent of shipments for the first half of the year.
“Consumer taste and fashion, advances in PIM software and messaging, and rapidly declining prices all combined to drive the strong growth in smartphone sales,” said Roberta Cozza, a principal research analyst at Gartner. “On the other hand, consumer demand for PDAs is dwindling, especially with no new models from Palm in 2006.”
Palm, one time the the standard of PDA and has been fading last few years, now Palm tries a come back with the Popular Treo’s and some new products that will be announced on October 12. Nokia owns half of the smartphone market and was responsible for 42 percent of PDA and smartphone shipments during the first part of 2006. RIM is also doing very well, with a 60 percent year-over-year increase in shipments. The company is hoping that its new BlackBerry Pearl smartphone will prove to be a hit in the consumer market where BlackBerry’s have yet to catch on despite the push of Microsoft Push-mail capability, which still shows slow adoption among corporate users and general consumers.
The cut back on production of the stand alone PDA across the whole industry also explains the drop in marketshare. Recently HP hesitantly introduced few devices such the hx5900 which is GPS/Media oriented and few phone devices mainly in Asian market just to conduct some market research but the global marketing plan is still unknown. Dell still selling the remaining of Axim lines but no future products are on their roadmap. Other vendors such Fujitsu, Acer who are still making some excellent stand alone PDAs but lacking of support infrastructure in the US, they are still stay away from American market. In contrast, Companies such HTC, e-Ten, etc. are making very aggressive move introducing many many devices packed with innovation and do not forget Apple rumored to jump in to the market with their iPod-like phone device.
The future will tell if the stand alone PDA will ever make a come back! I doubt it…
Smartphones are now much popular as they are getiing more trendy & cheaper. The figure that makes me wonder is PDA’s dominance in North America. Mebbe, you are right. The delay in making new models could be the major reason.
Being a mobile geek, I also found an interesting blog like yours, on Mobile Industry at http://rncos.com/Blog/mobile.html, dealing with lastest happenings in mobile industry.