Windows Phone Thoughts: Australian Handheld Figures Soar

"The Australian smart handheld device market will continue to flourish in 2005 as vendors become more strategic in their offerings and target niche areas, an analyst says. The local handheld market is skewed towards consumers, and largely driven by the basic personal digital assistant, according to IDC."

Here are some interesting statistics that featured in The Australian IT recently. After all of those reports in the past suggesting that the end was nigh for mobile devices, these new figures show some promising signs that more and more people are beginning to discover the full potential of handhelds and thus tap into this exciting market. Pen-based devices recorded 28.8% growth in Q4 2004. Converged devices recorded 42.7% growth in Q3 2004, and they also comprised 68.6% of the total Australian handheld devices market. Apart from that, this growth is expected to continue well on to 2006. Although Symbian still led the way (largely due to the fact that so many people adopt the readily-available Symbian-based phones) at 44.2% of the total market share in 2004, Microsoft's Windows Mobile came a close second at 36.1%. And Palm? Well, they were third at an "oh-so-great" 10.6%. :sleeping: