News

Gartner Research has just released some very good news for the PDA industry. According to their count, PDA shipments totaled 3.4 million units in the first quarter of 2005, a 25% boost over the same quarter last year and the biggest first quarter growth ever. The average selling price moved up to $406, the highest since Gartner began tracking the number in 2000.

Perhaps even better news for the industry is Smartphones are not counted in these numbers. Gartner doesn't count devices like the Treo 650 and HP h6315 but they do accept data devices like most BlackBerry units. As a result, the following charts will look skewed quite a bit.

The only negative out of this report seems to be for palmOne. They're the only company that showed a decline in shipments for the first quarter. There could have been delays as potential buyers waited for new releases like the Tungsten E2.

The Western European PDA market grew 84.3 percent to 1.3 million units in the first quarter of 2005, while PDA shipments in the United States also totaled 1.3 million units, a 5 percent increase. PDA shipments in Asia/Pacific declined 2.7 percent with approximately 352,000 unit shipments. In Japan, PDA shipments declined 21.3 percent with nearly 80,000 units shipped in the first quarter.

Additional information is available in the Gartner report "PDA Market Has Record First Quarter, Growing 25 Percent." The report is available on Gartner's Web site at http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=g_search&id=480706.