World Handheld Market Up 12 Percent Last Quarter

The number of handhelds shipped worldwide increased substantially during the April-to-June quarter. This snaps a string of quarterly year-on-year declines in shipments that has persisted for over two years.

According to market research firm Gartner Dataquest, 2.75 million handhelds were shipped during this time period, 12 percent more than during the same quarter of 2003. This was also well above the number shipped during this period in 2002.

The major reason for this increase was Research in Motion (RIM) . Shipments of the BlackBerry line of wireless handhelds increased 289 percent year-on-year, and 26 percent over the previous quarter. RIM is now just barely behind HP in the handheld market.

Results by Company

As it has been for many years, palmOne was the number one handheld company during the April-to-June quarter with 33.2 percent of the market. However, its shipments were down about 3 percent from a year ago. Still, palmOne shipments were 9 percent above what they were in the first quarter of this year. The release of two new Zire handhelds probably accounted for the sequential increase.

These figures don't include the roughly 160,000 Treo 600s shipped during the quarter, because Gartner classifies these as smartphones, not handhelds.

In second place in the handheld race was HP with 19.2 percent of the world market. Its shipments increased 39 percent from the same quarter a year ago, but were down 8 percent sequentially. HP introduced no new iPAQs during this quarter, and sales may have been affected by rumors of new models expected this summer.

In third place, and snapping at HP's heels, is RIM. It had 18.5 percent of the world handheld market during the second quarter of this year.

Not surprisingly, sales of Clies dropped significantly during this time period. Sony announced on June first that it was leaving the world handheld market. palmOne is expected to pick up many former Sony customers because both companies' handhelds run the Palm OS. Sony had 6.4 percent of the worldwide handheld market last quarter.

Dell shipments were down 10 percent sequentially and up less than 7 percent from a year ago. Despite having the first handheld out running Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition, many buyers are waiting for Pocket PCs with VGA screens, which Dell's Axim X30 doesn't have.

Other handheld makers suffering steep declines in their sales were Toshiba and Sharp.