Windows Phone Thoughts: Pocket PC's seen more and more

While at CeBIT eating breakfast in a small cafe with about 12 people in it, I noticed two people at separate tables using PDA's. One was a Palm M5xx and the other was a Jornada 56x. So I decided to keep track of attendees using PDA's during the day. Of course with all of the cool stuff around I kept forgetting to really pay attention, but seeing someone with a PDA would remind me and I'd keep diligent count for about 15 minutes and forget again. :-)

Final count was 10 Pocket PC's to 6 Palms. I know the count was less than scientific and in no way implies marketshare or anything, but it is a start contrast to 24 months ago and even 12 months ago. Pocket PC's are coming on strong. And note that I said I was tracking attendees. If I tracked all PDA's seen at the event used in the booths, it would have easily been thousands of Pocket PC's to just a few dozen Palm's. It seemed every other booth had anywhere from one to several dozen iPAQ's in use whereas most Palm's were either in the Sony/Palm booths or were shown to say that Palm's were supported, like MySAP. There was one pic in particular I'll append to this post showing someone using their iPAQ with a WiFi card to remotely control a robot. Can you imagine factory supervisors wondering around on the factory floor with their Pocket PC keeping full tabs on all of the machinery rather than being cooped up in a control booth?