NEW YORK: Worldwide sales of PDAs, or personal digital assistants, rose to a record high of 3.7 million units in the second quarter of 2006, up 2.7 per cent compared to the second quarter of 2006.
According to market research firm Gartner, the sales were driven by the ongoing integration of wide area network technology in PDAs along with the marketing efforts of the firms manufacturing these devices. However, revenue from this segment fell 4.1 per cent to $1.38 billion. Gartner pointed out that compared to the second quarter of 2005, the average selling price of a PDA fell 6 per cent to $373, mostly because of old product lines and rebates offered by wireless providers.
Gartner said smaller vendors cornered much of the market growth, the losers being the top three vendors. However, Research in Motion (RIM), Palm and Hewlett-Packard retained the top three slots though all these firms lost to smaller rivals like Mio Technology, Motorola and Danger.
Palm lost 26.7 per cent of market share and HP 15.1 per cent, while RIM's share fell 1.1 per cent. Another leading player, Nokia, lost as much as 40.5 per cent. The highest beneficiary, Mio Technology, gained a 65.4 per cent, taking it to the fourth position, with a market share of 8.2 per cent. RIM topped with 22.5 per cent, Palm with 12.7 per cent and HP with 10.4 per cent.
Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS accounted for 54.2 per cent of the market for mobile OS platforms during the quarter. RIM OS came second with 22.5 per cent while Palm OS third with 13.4 per cent.
The Gartner study does not consider smart phones like Palm's Treo 700w or RIM's Blackberry 71xx as PDAs, but HP's iPaq 69xx and Nokia's E61 are part of this segment.
