Wednesday, November 13, 2002
PDA Sales Continue to Slip
Posted by Jason Dunn in "THOUGHT" @ 03:25 PM
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,106869,tk,dn111202X,00.asp
PDA sales are down a little from last year, but is 2.4% really significant enough to be overly concerned about? Personally, I don't think so - but it will be interesting to see over the next twelve months if people start buying smart phone devices (whether they be Symbian or Microsoft-based) instead of PDAs.
"Worldwide shipments of personal digital assistants dropped 6 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier due to weak economies in most parts of the world, research company IDC said Tuesday. A total of 2.44 million handhelds were shipped in the third quarter this year, compared with 2.59 million in the year-ago period. The number of shipments continued its sequential decline, down 7.1 percent from the second quarter, the third straight quarter-on-quarter drop, IDC said in a statement.
Palm leads in market share with 33.8 percent, up from 29.1 percent. Sony and Toshiba, both relatively new market entrants, also showed strong market share increases. Sony is now the world's second-largest PDA vendor with 14.4 percent of the market, up from 3.6 percent, and Toshiba is number four with a 4.3 percent market share, according to IDC. No data on Toshiba in 2001 was given. Other vendors took a beating, notably Casio Computer and Hewlett-Packard, which saw their market share decline, respectively, from 7.1 percent to 4.1 percent and from 12.4 percent to 11.9 percent, IDC said."
PDA sales are down a little from last year, but is 2.4% really significant enough to be overly concerned about? Personally, I don't think so - but it will be interesting to see over the next twelve months if people start buying smart phone devices (whether they be Symbian or Microsoft-based) instead of PDAs.
"Worldwide shipments of personal digital assistants dropped 6 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier due to weak economies in most parts of the world, research company IDC said Tuesday. A total of 2.44 million handhelds were shipped in the third quarter this year, compared with 2.59 million in the year-ago period. The number of shipments continued its sequential decline, down 7.1 percent from the second quarter, the third straight quarter-on-quarter drop, IDC said in a statement.
Palm leads in market share with 33.8 percent, up from 29.1 percent. Sony and Toshiba, both relatively new market entrants, also showed strong market share increases. Sony is now the world's second-largest PDA vendor with 14.4 percent of the market, up from 3.6 percent, and Toshiba is number four with a 4.3 percent market share, according to IDC. No data on Toshiba in 2001 was given. Other vendors took a beating, notably Casio Computer and Hewlett-Packard, which saw their market share decline, respectively, from 7.1 percent to 4.1 percent and from 12.4 percent to 11.9 percent, IDC said."
