Thursday, March 16, 2006

PDA (Wireless-Enabled) sales grow, RIM at the forefront

PDA sales grow, RIM at the forefront  
Friday, May 06, 2005 at 18:50 by Laurence Norah
 
A report published by Gartner has shown that worldwide shipments of personal digital assistants (PDA's) has gone up by 25 percent since this period last year, with total shipments for the first quarter 2005 of 3.4 million.

This is despite the fact that the average selling price of a PDA has gone up by 15 percent to $406. This is the highest it has ever been.

Gartner attribute the growth in sales to the popularity of PDA's with built in wireless or cellular capabilities. In fact, around 55% of PDA's sold had at least one of these technologies built in. These devices allow users to check their e-mail wirelessly, which is becoming very popular with executives on the go.

Research in Motion, with their Blackberry device, are at the forefront of the PDA growth spurt. Blackberry shipments grew by 75.6 percent in the first quarter of 2005, and RIM are now the No. 1 vendor of PDA devices worldwide. This is no doubt down to the user friendly QWERTY keyboard and large screens that Blackberry devices have.

Currently losing out in the PDA war is palmOne, who have been in the market since 1996. Shipments declined by 26.3 percent, and market share declined to 18 percent. Up and coming vendors include Nokia, who have re-entered the market with their 9300 and 9500 products.

The Gartner report also found that the most popular operating system for PDA's is Windows CE, which currently holds nearly 50% of the market share.

No doubt as wireless networks become more and more prevalent, mobile devices such as this are going to become more and more popular. The only problem will be trying to escape the office, as soon the office will just be wherever you and your handheld are. We're not sure if that's a good thing or not.


Article published by http://itvibe.com/news/3511/

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