2006: PDA market showed signs of recovery

Global shipments of PDAs in 2006 grew by 18.4% to 17.7 million units, with RIM's "flagship" product being BlackBerry's.

However, contrary to the bright situation of RIM, "giants" Palm continued to slump in both sales and market share.

When considering the operating system for PDA, the number of devices based on Microsoft Windows Mobile platform of Microsoft continues to donate to 38.8%, reaching nearly 10 million devices. It also helped Microsoft increase its market share to 56.1% compared to 2005's 47.9% reference threshold.

BlackBerry continued to be strong at the position of PDA market leader when growing 10% to 3.5 million units in 2006. However, its market share decreased from 21.3% last year to below the threshold of 20. % in the whole of 2006, Gartner said.

Back to Palm. PDA sales shipped by the company in the past 12 months have decreased by 29% to less than 2.8 million units. At the same time, Palm's market share also dropped from 18.8% to 11.1%.

Sharing the same fate is the giant HP when sales also fell 24.1% to 2.3 million units. Its market share also fell by more than one-third to 9.7% from the previous year's 15.1%.

Gartner said the reason for the increase in PDA sales is because of the high demand for email and wireless Internet access. The research firm also found that 60% of PDAs shipped with mobile connectivity, up significantly from 47% in 2005.

In addition, Gartner data also distinguishes between PDA with smart phone models, a point that not all observers can easily agree with. For example, BlackBerry data only includes the top 8700 series (with email, calendar and phone functions), not counting the BlackBerry 7100s or Pearl.

Similarly, data on Palm does not include Treo, a newly launched high-end model, combining personal help devices with mobile phones. This is considered a direct competitor to BlackBerry 8700.

In addition, while the Sidekick was successful primarily thanks to its oversized keyboard, optimized for messaging, it was honored to be ranked by Gartner on the PDA list.

Compared to a mobile phone, a PDA is a tiny guy. Another market research firm, IDC, has reported that the total number of handsets shipped in 2006 has surpassed 1 billion units, the first time in history.

Trong Cam