Friday, October 29, 2004
PDA Sales Continue to Drop? Define PDA!
Posted by Jonathon Watkins in "THOUGHT" @ 06:00 AM
"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 fell as some prominent vendors decided to pull back from the market, IDC says. Worldwide shipments totaled 2.1 million units in the third quarter, down 8.7 percent from last year's third quarter. IDC defines a handheld as a device that does not include telephony but may include Internet connectivity……PDAs are in decline as mobile phone vendors have substantially improved the personal information management capabilities of their phones. Most people don't want to carry two separate devices to manage their personal contacts and make phone calls, which has led to increased interest in devices such as PalmOne's Treo 650 and Hewlett-Packard's iPaq h6315.
Hmm, the old One Device/ Two Device argument seems to be going all one way at the moment. (So to speak ;-)) The PC World article argues that Dell and Mitac International have built up market share on the back of low-cost, low-margin devices, which means that they won't succeed in the long term. Hmm, the Dell X50v does not seem to fit the billing and Mitac seem to be doing just nicely with their GPS embedded PPCs. GPS navigation is a huge growth area and it's hard to navigate with a teeny tiny smartphone screen! HP's non-phone iPaqs also bucked the overall trend in recent quarters by growing just under 12%. In the end it may be down to definitions and semantics. So is it a Pocket PC with built in phone, or a phone with built in Pocket PC? In this era of convergence, aren't both PDAs?
We've been saying at PPCT for a while that wirelessly connected Pocket PCs are the future. Wifi, 3G and the smorgasbord of current 2G mobile technologies all add up to powerful set of connection options for voice and data. Add a Bluetooth headset and a 60Gb hard drive into the mix and you would have a huge MP3 player, a PDA and a Phone. Just leave out the camera and you're set. ;-) So, what's your take on the perennial 'PDAs are dying' debate?
Hmm, the old One Device/ Two Device argument seems to be going all one way at the moment. (So to speak ;-)) The PC World article argues that Dell and Mitac International have built up market share on the back of low-cost, low-margin devices, which means that they won't succeed in the long term. Hmm, the Dell X50v does not seem to fit the billing and Mitac seem to be doing just nicely with their GPS embedded PPCs. GPS navigation is a huge growth area and it's hard to navigate with a teeny tiny smartphone screen! HP's non-phone iPaqs also bucked the overall trend in recent quarters by growing just under 12%. In the end it may be down to definitions and semantics. So is it a Pocket PC with built in phone, or a phone with built in Pocket PC? In this era of convergence, aren't both PDAs?
We've been saying at PPCT for a while that wirelessly connected Pocket PCs are the future. Wifi, 3G and the smorgasbord of current 2G mobile technologies all add up to powerful set of connection options for voice and data. Add a Bluetooth headset and a 60Gb hard drive into the mix and you would have a huge MP3 player, a PDA and a Phone. Just leave out the camera and you're set. ;-) So, what's your take on the perennial 'PDAs are dying' debate?
