Palm dominates 2001 PDA sales, but Compaq gains

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/020213/n12279586_1.html">http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/020213/n12279586_1.html</a><br /><br />Not unexpected, Palm is still king of the PDA's in marketshare, but have they fallen a long way. Palm Inc. alone was well over 70% just 2 years ago, falling to 50.4% in 2000 and now down to 38.6%. Shipments fell from 5.6M units in 2000 to 5.1M in 2001. Meanwhile, Compaq's units nearly trippled from 466K units in 2000 to 1.3M in 2001, taking 9.8% of the market.<br /><br />"Palm OS, Palm's operating system that powers PDAs by makers such as Palm and Handspring, captured about 57 percent of the worldwide PDA market in 2001. Vendors of Microsoft's system software for pocket computers, controlled some 21 percent of the market, up from about 11 percent in 2000, Dataquest said."<br /><br />I know there have been other reports recently by a company called NDP Intellect showing Palm is growing, but those are retail numbers only - meaning what you sell through BestBuy or CompUSA stores. Internet, wholesale and direct sales are excluded. Because of the Pocket PC's higher price and discounters typically available on the internet, a higher percentage of PPC buyers buy over the internet. Finally, and most importantly, the enterprise customers either buy en masse from wholesalers or directly from the OEM's themselves. I've been waiting for several weeks for a comprehensive market study incorporating all sales figures from all sales channels.<br /><br />Remember when Palm and its licensees had over 80% of the market and the Palm Sized PC was well under 10%. Now Palm OS is down to 57% while the Pocket PC is up to 21%. How things change in just two short years. :-)

[Foo Fighter]

Palm is just a mere shadow of the company they once were. The only thing saving Palm at this point, is its installed base, and Sony. I expect Sony to revolutionize the Palm platform and bring some credibility back to the OS. This new clam-shell prototype shown at PalmSource is just a glimpse of things to come.

I like the functionality of PocketPC, and the robust environment it offers, but the platform still falls terribly short on hardware design. No OEM from the PPC camp has developed at device as well crafted or intuitively designed as Sony's handhelds...especially the T615c.

[Janak Parekh]

Foo & Ed - your posts are so similar to those at PDABuzz... you need to set up backend replication between the two. ;-)

Seriously, while Palm obviously cannot afford to rest, neither can Microsoft. It'll be interesting to see what WinCE .NET brings to the PPC platform, as that could be a major coup for MS, because by its release 412MHz StrongARM should be prevalent, and hopefully PPC's with built-in wireless/cell phone modules will be available worldwide (including the US :))

--bdj

[Kre]

Its amazing what can happen in two years, indeed. Im eager to see what the market shares will be in 2005.

I dont doubt that Sony could bring more credibility back to the palm handheld, but they will have to because palm and the others wont make that happen.

But ultimately, no one will be able to dominate the market over Microsoft. MS is just too big. MS took on the US government and won. To MS and its partners, taking on Sony will be like taking candy from a kid. MS has the clear advantage with OS`s and too many partners for Sony alone to dominate. So if Sony is mostly responsible for reviving the palm based handheld, Sony will have to take on Microsoft, Compaq, Hp, Casio, Toshiba, NEC, and any other ppc manufacturer. And thats just not going to happen.

Handspring and Handera are hardly threats to Microsoft. And palm is quickly losing market share. Sony alone cant compete with the entire ppc industry. I think in another three years, pocket pc will dominate the market.

[Scott R]

Foo & Ed - your posts are so similar to those at PDABuzz... you need to set up backend replication between the two. ;-)

I open up one browser window for PDABuzz and another one for this site, turn on text-to-speech, and listen to it in stereo.

Scott