STAMFORD, Conn.-Two new studies show the market for personal digital assistants continues to shrink as more and more users are enticed by smart phones.
“Through the end of 2004, smart phones will generally have a negative impact on the low end of the PDA market, as many individual users will find the personal information management and e-mail capabilities of smart phones acceptable,” said Todd Kort, principal analyst in Gartner’s Computing Platforms Worldwide group. “These users will tend to become less interested in low-end PDAs that have provided these capabilities.”
According to Gartner’s new PDA figures, the number of device shipments worldwide decreased 5.3 percent in 2003 to a total of 11.5 million units. Gartner said PalmOne Inc. maintained the top spot, followed closely by Hewlett-Packard Co., Sony Corp. and Research In Motion Ltd.
Similar numbers from rival research firm IDC confirm Gartner’s assessment. IDC found the total handheld market decreased to 10.4 million units last year, a 17.9-percent decline from the 12.6 million units shipped in 2002. However, IDC’s figures do not include sales of RIM’s BlackBerry devices. IDC and Gartner differ slightly in their definition of handheld and wireless devices, a common theme in the consumer electronics industry as device makers continue to innovate with wireless technologies from Bluetooth to Wi-Fi to wide area wireless networks.
