New research shows the market for personal digital assistants continues to decline, with shipments dropping 33.1 percent sequentially to 2.2 million units in the first quarter, according to research firm IDC.
“Despite increasingly powerful handheld devices reaching market, the consumer uptake of entry-level devices available from nearly every vendor calls into question the upgrade path and value posed by the high-end devices. If entry-level devices prove to be the most successful products adopted by consumers, the long-term impact could be acceleration away from hardware differentiation and a further loss of value in the handheld industry,” said David Linsalata, an analyst in IDC’s Mobile Devices program. “Handheld device vendors must continue to search for consumer and enterprise solutions for their products, such as GPS device bundles, that utilize the range of capabilities contained in a handheld device.”
IDC said PalmOne Inc. continues to lead the market with a 36.1-percent share, followed by Hewlett-Packard Co., Sony Corp., Dell Computer Corp. and Toshiba. IDC defines the handheld device market as gadgets that do not include telephony, but may include wireless capabilities for Internet access and text communication.
In a separate but related study, IDC said hard disk drives are not yet ready for use in mobile phones. Hard disk drives store far more information than Flash-based memory technology, which is used in virtually all current mobile phones. IDC said the incorporation of hard disk drives into mobile handsets will require a number of innovations in battery life and price.
