More On Microsoft's Lead In The Handheld Market

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://news.com.com/Microsoft+grabs+lead+in+handheld+market/2100-1041_3-5450022.html?tag=prntfr">http://news.com.com/Microsoft+grabs+lead+in+handheld+market/2100-1041_3-5450022.html?tag=prntfr</a><br /><br /><i>"Shipments of handhelds that use Microsoft's Windows CE operating system rose by about 33 percent to about 1.4 million in the third quarter, compared with the same period last year. Meanwhile, shipments of handhelds that use the Palm operating system shrank by 26 percent to 851,000. Research In Motion showed huge growth, with shipments jumping more than 356 percent to 565,000 to round out the top three, the research company said. </i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hansberry/2004/20041112-q32004share2.gif" /><br /><br />This is more details from the Gartner report that we <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/index.php?topic_id=34275">discussed a few days ago</a>. I've always heard after posts such as this that no matter what the results were, PalmOS still was number one. Not anymore, having fallen from a lofty 80%+ just 5 years ago to today's levels. Maybe this is why pa1mOne is considering other operating systems like Windows Mobile and Linux. <a href="http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=7298">PalmInfoCenter</a> has even more details.

[sub_tex]

Maybe this is why pa1mOne is considering other operating systems like Windows Mobile and Linux.

Not that it matters. PalmOne doesn't make handhelds that are exciting. I suspect any PalmOne device running ANY OS to be just ok.

Everyone knows Sony was the good Palm company. Remember the complaints before Sony jumped in and started doing cool stuff with Palm devices?

Now they're gone, and it's just boring old PalmOne.

I think instead of thinking a new OS will save them, they need to rethink their whole strategy.

[shb]

Until about three weeks ago I was a Palm user and have been since the very first Palm Pilot came out. When they put out the Tungsten T5 with no wifi and still on OS5, etc, that was the last straw for me. Despite my investment in 3rd party software for PalmOS, I switched. And I'm very glad I did. I never would have thought I would abandon Palm but I think the writing is on the wall. It's too bad but I think it's becoming obvious to everyone. Geez if even a die-hard like myself has switched, that's gotta say something.

[orol]

I totaly agree. palmOne (or Palm) was always a very very boring company usually delivering very vey buggy products (first baches of V, m505, TT, T3, T5).

whereas sony always delivered what promised, with virtually no bugs, everything was extremelly well made. a real magnesium alloy body was a significat plus in my books

eventhough I was always palm os fan, I had only my first palm III from them. then I realized that they are always behind the competition.

I bought trg pro which had CF slot and I could put there ethernet CAF card, wifi CF card etc. then came sony with 320x320 resolution, followed by great units like TG50 with built in keyboard & bluetooth. or the best PDA I've ever owned UX50, which was a trully great design and powerful unit. still very smally a light (come to thing of it it was made of magnesium and no cheapo plastics). these days are gone .. as is palm os gone ..

sad but true, however, WM was also driven by palm os, with things like bigger resolution, rotation function etc.

now when WM2003 SE is rock solid and all major bugs of previos versions have been sloved, OS supported rotation is here. there is no way one can regret buying PPC.

but it was obvious that MS is going to take over PDA business sooner or later. the same will happen with nokia and its symbian vs MS smartphone edition.

[sub_tex]

but it was obvious that MS is going to take over PDA business sooner or later. the same will happen with nokia and its symbian vs MS smartphone edition.

I honestly hope it doesn't. Unlike the desktop, handhelds are an area where other companies have the opportunity to really take a hold. I'd like to see new players with different ideas and designs flourish here.

[Felix Torres]

Extra details at:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/industry/2004-11-12-ms-outsells-palmsource_x.htm

Of note:

"The robust Microsoft Windows CE market has been driven in part by the wide choice of vendors," said Gartner analyst Todd Kort. "Business customers tend to steer clear of markets dominated by a single supplier, which is where the Palm OS market stands today," he said.

Linux remained a distant fourth and lost market share as it is running on only 0.9% of handheld computers, down from 1.9% a year ago.

[Felix Torres]

but it was obvious that MS is going to take over PDA business sooner or later. the same will happen with nokia and its symbian vs MS smartphone edition.

I honestly hope it doesn't. Unlike the desktop, handhelds are an area where other companies have the opportunity to really take a hold. I'd like to see new players with different ideas and designs flourish here.

Simple prescription:

Do the job better than MS and its partners.
MS has strengths and weaknesses like anybody else.
And its partners screw up as often as anybody else.
They can be beaten.
Unless you screw up over and over and over and alienate your customers and software developers.

Funny thing, most of MS opponents end up doing exactly that...

[Yorri]

I still can't understand why anyone would want a PalmOS handheld in the first place even if the hardware is a cool design or has cool features. I started with a Palm and as soon as I graduated to an iPaq I would never turn back. They still don't even have a decent multithreading OS out yet. I just read about the Cobalt OS (which isn't available on handhelds from what I understand) and even it is still not up to snuff compared to the PocketPC OS.

Oh well it doesn't matter, there are some great PocketPCs out there anyway and now that they have VGA capabilities they are moving further ahead into the forefront.

People can complain all they want about MS but only liked the PalmOS until I tried a Pocket PC.

It's nice to see that people are finally coming to their senses and buying a pocket PC even if it is because Sony closed shop. Too bad they don't enter the Pocket PC world and shake things up...NOW THAT would be cool!

[Vincent M Ferrari]

I'm guessing that "shipments" means shipments to stores, not directly to consumers. If that's the case, why is this number significant? It doesn't account for sell through?

I'm really asking, not being sarcastic; this is just something I've always wondered about.

[Yorri]

but it doesn't mean they don't sell.

I am not sure handhelds are the same as CDs, newpapers and magazines where you can ship them back if they don't sell. Computer retailers usually only have what they can sell on stock since the computer depression of 2000-2001. I may be wrong but I doubt they would overstock these kinds of items.

It would be interesting to know the "actual" numbers though.

[Vincent M Ferrari]

I agree that it doesn't mean they don't sell. At the same time, it doesn't prove that they did either.

For example, how many Compaq laptops show up at Best Buy, sit on the shelf for three months, then move to the bargain shelf, then get marked down continuously until they sell if at all? In the mean time, they're getting more compaq laptops.

In theory, Compaq shipped lots of laptops to BB, but they didn't necessarily get sold.

That's all I'm saying... Shipping a lot of something doesn't mean a lot are selling. I remember working in Software Etc. where we would get 300 copies of Barbie 3.0 or even MS Bob, and they wouldn't sell at all, but MS would talk about the number of boxes shipped to retail locations.

Just thinking out loud here.

[Ed Hansberry]

I agree that it doesn't mean they don't sell. At the same time, it doesn't prove that they did either.
Because if they don't sell they get returned. ANd you have to figure that PDAs sold in the first 2-3 weeks of the quarter were in the previous quarter shipments and PDAs shipped in the last 2-3 weeks of this quarter won't sell until at least next quarter.

It all balances out - just timing. Getting point of sale info would be nearly impossible. You can either ask for shipment info from about 10 manufacturers or try to gather POS info from hundreds if not thousands of retailers that may not track in the same way you want, or worse, won't disclose the info.

[Jonathan1]

Never has so few screwed so many with such stupidity.

–Winston Churchill on the state of Palm’s market share if he was here to see what Palm has done with a near lockup of their market.

:way to go: Way to go Palm. If there was ever proof that Palm was a one trick pony I think that graph speaks for itself. I mean only a retard wouldn't actively fight against MS. And I don't think the folks at Palm are retarded. I just think they didn't\don’t know how to come up with something that actually competes. Any day now with OS 6 guys. :roll:

I think Palm will go down in history as the stupidest company ever to grace the computer industry. I mean they have had YEARS to compete. YEARS! What? Are their days at their HQ spent playing indoor putt putt golf?
“Bob don’t you think we should get to work on those WIFI drivers?”
“Just one more round” I almost made it past the windmill.”

[Ed Hansberry]

I think Palm will go down in history as the stupidest company ever to grace the computer industry. I mean they have had YEARS to compete. YEARS! What? Are their days at their HQ spent playing indoor putt putt golf?

No doubt it will be a case study in business schools soon. Not only have they had years to compete, they had over 80% marketshare in a market they practically invented and instead of listening to their customer, they kept telling the customer what they didn't need. And "zen." Bwahahahahaahahahaha!

[Phoenix]

Never has so few screwed so many with such stupidity.

–Winston Churchill on the state of Palm’s market share if he was here to see what Palm has done with a near lockup of their market.

:way to go: Way to go Palm. If there was ever proof that Palm was a one trick pony I think that graph speaks for itself. I mean only a retard wouldn't actively fight against MS. And I don't think the folks at Palm are retarded. I just think they didn't\don’t know how to come up with something that actually competes. Any day now with OS 6 guys. :roll:

I think Palm will go down in history as the stupidest company ever to grace the computer industry. I mean they have had YEARS to compete. YEARS! What? Are their days at their HQ spent playing indoor putt putt golf?
“Bob don’t you think we should get to work on those WIFI drivers?”
“Just one more round” I almost made it past the windmill.”

:lol: :lol: :lol: That just cracks me up :lol:

[shb]

It's true. I know that my loyalty meant absolutely nothing to them. They had to work hard to push me away but by golly they did it. I haven't looked back since. And I keep finding groovy stuff that my PPC does that I never knew I was missing but now don't know how I lived without.

[mbranscum]

Now Ed...you know that Gartner is a lapdog for Microsoft. And, you failed to mention that they're stats DO NOT include Treos!!!

[Gerard]

Dell shipments mean something, at least, as they don't do retail. Or do they? I think it's just online/phone sales. So every unit shipped means a unit sold. And Dell's numbers are very nice of late.

For a chuckle, I peeked in on writingonyourpalm.net this afternoon. Man, Jeff is even more avid a Palm salesman than when I looked in last, back in the spring. And to think, he used to be a rational person, not given to strange and twisted justifications for sales on one side or the other. Now he seems all about proving that Windows Mobile devices are uniform, boring, over-burdened with gadgets... the same old Palm advocate party line: you don't need it because we don't supply it.' Ho hum. Meanwhile, diversity in the PPC camp thrives, with more than 25 vendors competing for expanding markets.

[twalk]

Now Ed...you know that Gartner is a lapdog for Microsoft. And, you failed to mention that they're stats DO NOT include Treos!!!

This is definitely true. Gartner has been known many times in the past to skew stats to favor MS. And haven't they been predicting the death of Palm for the last 5 years or so?

When you include the numbers of treos sold, things don't look nearly as bad for P1. (How many people who buy a treo are also going to buy a normal PDA?) When you count the treos, the gain by PPC looks more like a growing of the market, rather than a taking over of significant PalmOS customers.

That all being said, P1 losing this marketshare wasn't inevenable at all. This is a much different situation than netscape/wp/lotus/etc went through. Heck, MS has been acting indifferently about the entire market for years. No, this is just sheer management stupidity on P1's part. (PalmOS has real strength in the market. P1 has been actively destructive, to the point of running customers off. But yet they still get sales...)

Still, I can easily see 5-10M in potential PDA sales left on the table by all players. Whoever wises up and claims that will get a big lead.

Another issue is how a one-trick pony like RIM has grabbed such a large chunk of the market.

2 stats that I'd really love to see is: what percentage of PDAs end up just sitting in desk drawers, and how many PDA users have abandoned them because a low-end cell phone does everything good enough for them.

[Foo Fighter]

Not that it matters. PalmOne doesn't make handhelds that are exciting.

Neither do Pocket PC vendors. I just bought an HP rx31xx, and I'm returning it next week. If this device is a metaphor for typical Pocket PC hardware then it's no wonder the PDA market is imploding. This iPaq is the cheapest quality product I have ever seen. It feels more like a toy than a serious business tool. My Zodiac looks and feels more professional...and it is a toy. The same can be said for pretty much all of HP's "new" line of iPaqs that are ugly compared to earlier more elegant models like the 19xx line. And you can forget about Dull, err..I mean Dell. Who does that leave to build high quality professional looking mobile devices in the PPC camp? Anyone...anyone? There just isn't anything out there that speaks to me, in either camp really.

Face facts, the PDA market is declining, and that is based in no small part to the fact that PDAs in general are not exciting anymore. They're just another boring marginalized product category like pocket calculators. Heck, I would rather spend my money are more compelling gadgets like the iPod, a new PC, home theater system, etc., and I would bet money that most consumers feel exactly the same way.

The glory days are over.

[PJE]

The same can be said for pretty much all of HP's "new" line of iPaqs that are ugly compared to earlier more elegant models like the 19xx line. And you can forget about Dull, err..I mean Dell. Who does that leave to build high quality professional looking mobile devices in the PPC camp? Anyone...anyone? There just isn't anything out there that speaks to me, in either camp really.

I agree about the most of the current HP devices, with the exception of the hx4700, feeling cheap, but my new Dell X50v has excellent build quality - far in advance of my old X5. It reminds me of a grown up HP 19xx.

Also, if the report doesn't count PDA phones its not worth the paper its written on.

[AhuhX]

Now Ed...you know that Gartner is a lapdog for Microsoft. And, you failed to mention that they're stats DO NOT include Treos!!!

Pfffffft. Treo-smeo...

Look, the thing hasn't done jack anywhere but the US.

I think the "Wait, you forgot about the Treo!!!" line is just the new version of the "But Palm still has over 90%" of the US market!" line. This has been bandied about every time we've seen Palm's fortunes diminish in the world-wide market share figures. I presume that is no longer true so we are now looking to the Treo as an excuse for Palm's diminishing fortunes.

IMO The Treo isn't going to save Palm. They just have too much competition nowsdays, and clearly they are becoming overwhelmed by it.

[Deslock]

Gartner has been known many times in the past to skew stats to favor MS. And haven't they been predicting the death of Palm for the last 5 years or so?
As did many WinCE fans. They said Palm wouldn't last past 1999. Then it was 2000. Then 2001, 2002, and 2003. I always figured Palm's downfall was a certainty, but years ago I argued they’d last until at least 2004-05 (with the success of the Treo, they might make in until 2006). But with the marketshare shifted to favor WinCE/PPC, Microsoft's impending dominance will accelerate. I’d hoped that Microsoft would be forced to fix CE's problems before they crushed Palm, but I guess it was wishful thinking... at this point we're stuck with crappy multitasking, horrible memory management, and a generally temperamental OS.
I think Palm will go down in history as the stupidest company ever to grace the computer industry. I mean they have had YEARS to compete. YEARS!
There are two sides to that. It took Microsoft 8 years to catch Palm. 8 YEARS! (keep in mind, Palm's lead was only 6 months - the Pilot1000 came out April '96 while CE devices came out that Fall). Microsoft was able to pour mucho resources into CE/PPC without needing to come close to breaking even (nevermind making a profit). There's no way Palm could compete with that forever.

Additionally, it's thanks to Microsoft that Palm lasted this long. Sure, Palm didn’t help themselves by overplaying the "Zen of Palm" card and then never coming out with an OS6 device. But Microsoft initially used the Windows desktop GUI on CE devices. Even more problematic was their decision to base CE on Win32 (despite its large CPU and memory requirements). This lead to years of total failure in the market (as well as the various OS issues we now have to deal with).

Instead they should've delayed CE a year so they could design it from the ground up to run on a handheld computer. They would've beat Palm years ago, saved themselvs a lot of money, and (most importantly) we would most likely have a better OS. So as far as future case-studies go, I don't think this will be especially favorable towards Microsoft.

[Numsquat]

One thing about shipments is that major vendors are ordering less stock, keeping less on hand in the stores, so I don't think "shipments" are that far off from "sales" and it plays the same for all OS's. The interesting statistic would be the number of units sold to new users versus upgraders. Not that the data is out there but that would show more if the market is expanding, stagnatet, or declining.

It all reality, the PDA is entering a mature market, similar to PC's not long ago. It's all about upgrading the hardware instead of introducing something new, hence my agreement with Foo that handheld's are boring anymore.

That also doesn't mean that my PDA is any less useful though. I still use an Axim X5 Basic, it does what I want it to do. I would like more RAM, speed and built-in Wi-Fi but I'm not ready to shell out $400+ dollars for that. There is little out there to really interest me, my money is going towards upgrading my digital camera and such, real upgrades that are needed for my needs.

[surur]

Neither do Pocket PC vendors. I just bought an HP rx31xx, and I'm returning it next week. If this device is a metaphor for typical Pocket PC hardware then it's no wonder the PDA market is imploding. This iPaq is the cheapest quality product I have ever seen. It feels more like a toy than a serious business tool. My Zodiac looks and feels more professional...and it is a toy. The same can be said for pretty much all of HP's "new" line of iPaqs that are ugly compared to earlier more elegant models like the 19xx line. And you can forget about Dull, err..I mean Dell. Who does that leave to build high quality professional looking mobile devices in the PPC camp? Anyone...anyone? There just isn't anything out there that speaks to me, in either camp really.

Despite not wishing to disclose your location, you are clearly in America. For you its clearly only the home grown products which are being considered i.e. HP, Dell, PalmOne, and if they are making junk, the whole market is junk.

Well, what about FS Loox 720 ? Or the Asus unit, Or all the convergent products make by HTC, such as the XDA IIs. There are plenty of people excited by these products which are making real (if incremental) advances, not going backwards like HP with their 64MB RAM and stupid trackpad, and huge range of QVGA products.

If we dont support the OEM's that are advancing the market they will decide they are wasting their money and time. Stop just buying a brand, buy the best product.

Surur

[orol]

actually if we exclude blackberry and all other coverged decived like MDA/XDA series, treo, hp 63xx we will see that the PDAs are actually dead.

these new coverged devices are the driver of the market.

e.g. I switched my ux50 for a nokia smartphone. no regret. it does everything I bought palm initially for and I have everytime with me in my pocket :)

btw if garner didn't include in this survey treos why they included blackberries ? kinda biased, but still we have to face the fact palm is dying by very very bad management

[ADBrown]

Not that it matters. PalmOne doesn't make handhelds that are exciting.

Neither do Pocket PC vendors. I just bought an HP rx31xx,

Well, there's your problem. The new iPaqs, to put it gently, suck. Get yourself an X50v. Nothing but the best.

actually if we exclude blackberry and all other coverged decived like MDA/XDA series, treo, hp 63xx we will see that the PDAs are actually dead.


Nah. PDAs still sell at least four times as many units as so-called smartphones do, maybe more, and there's no sign of the gap closing. There are more data-enabled handhelds now, but they're a lot more PDA than phone. How many people use an iPaq 6300 the same way as they would a 'phone'? The XDAs? You might use a headset to make calls from them, but you would have a hard time defining them as a 'phone'. I would argue that smartphones are the ones that are in danger of extinction as more handhelds have the integrated functionality of a phone, in small form-factors, along with far more features than any 'smartphone' could ever offer.

[Jonathan1]

actually if we exclude blackberry and all other coverged decived like MDA/XDA series, treo, hp 63xx we will see that the PDAs are actually dead.

these new coverged devices are the driver of the market.

e.g. I switched my ux50 for a nokia smartphone. no regret. it does everything I bought palm initially for and I have everytime with me in my pocket :)

If that is where PDA's are going I will leave the market entirely. I DO NOT want a convergence device damn it.
First and foremost they are a jack of all trades and master of none. They are more worried about max battery time because they have the damn phone in it. I want my phone and PPC separate! I want a PPC device that focuses on being an ultra mobile computing device instead of trying to be a phone. I want a phone that gets fantastic battery life that I can nab and easily stuff it in my pocket. And don’t give me this smartphone crap. Smartphones are too dang small to realistically use as a PDA. I’ve seen several MS smartphones and NONE of them have impressed me. Again they are trying to stuff a PDA into a phone and failing spectacularly.
If the market wants to go this way fine. More power to them. I won’t follow.

[orol]

Nah. PDAs still sell at least four times as many units as so-called smartphones do, maybe more, and there's no sign of the gap closing. There are more data-enabled handhelds now, but they're a lot more PDA than phone. How many people use an iPaq 6300 the same way as they would a 'phone'? The XDAs? You might use a headset to make calls from them, but you would have a hard time defining them as a 'phone'. I would argue that smartphones are the ones that are in danger of extinction as more handhelds have the integrated functionality of a phone, in small form-factors, along with far more features than any 'smartphone' could ever offer.


heh you are totaly wrong :) let alone nokia already sold over 30 milion smartphones for only 2 years! it's more then all PPC ever produces combined! :)

let alone this year nokia sold 2.5 times more smartphones then all PPC combied! this year they assume 25 million smartphones will be sold whereas only barely 10 million PDA

check the graph bellow.

http://www.mobilmania.cz/Files/Obrazky/art17/NokiaPress/2.jpg

[ADBrown]

No. Nokia crams Symbian into many of its camera phones destined for Europe for no reason other than to inflate the sales of 'smartphones' and Nokia's placement in that market. It's a big lie, rather like a PR version of 'dumping' goods at a loss to grab marketshare. Ask a Nokia rep how many of their 'smartphones' have third-party programs installed, and they'll stare at you blankly. They prefer not to mention the fact that the percentage of their 'smartphones' actually used as more than a camera phone is in the single digits.

[mboonyap]

This is worrisome indeed. The Tungsten C is the main PDA at my medical insitution, with seamless connectivity with the network. I have tried Pocket PC before but it seems like many programs, in comparison to their palm counterparts, require much more memory, and have "hung" at times while switching programs. That "hourglass" or "spinning color wheel' is something i refuse to see on a handheld device, that that has been something I havent' had to deal with on my Tungsten C. Whats more, unless I did a poor installation on my Palm, by experience is having to reset my former Pocket PC (ipaq 2200) at a ratio of 5:1 (vs PalmOS). We don't want converged devices, either, just somerthing that can help manage information...don't need my phone going off in the ICU or anything like that. Anyhone else with the same concerns? Should I just jump ship and make my next PDA a Pocket pc?

[orol]

No. Nokia crams Symbian into many of its camera phones destined for Europe for no reason other than to inflate the sales of 'smartphones' and Nokia's placement in that market. It's a big lie, rather like a PR version of 'dumping' goods at a loss to grab marketshare. Ask a Nokia rep how many of their 'smartphones' have third-party programs installed, and they'll stare at you blankly. They prefer not to mention the fact that the percentage of their 'smartphones' actually used as more than a camera phone is in the single digits.

and you aparently live in the US, where cell phone is still relatively rare. in europe, there are countries where there are more activated cell phones then citizens :) nowadays, there is a camera in almost every phone regardless whether it's a smartphone or not. actually the thing is that the nokia and other companies started to have two versions of phones (one should be a cameraless for the corporate users). the multimedia messaging and video call is the driver of the market right now. I know, it will take at lease 2 years to make it possible in the US (for obvious reasons), but in europe if a cell phone want to be sucessful it must have a camera. operators wont subsidy it otherwise ..

and guess what ? symbian has bigger "programmer village" then PPCs have and in same respect even more applications! :) you wonder why ? because symbian is based on EPOC, which was here long before palm and PPC were here :) it's a psion herritage :)

not to mention look at those symbina games, there aren't games for PPC like that. is there a SIMS port on PPC ? no. is there a need for speed underground variant on PPC ? no. is there a counter strike variant on PPC? no

all games you can play either over BT or over the internet as multiplayer! :)

nevertheless, it's for sure microsoft will beat symbian in like 5-7 years anyway, but now we are speaking about converged devices :)

even blackberry that is target pretty much only on business customers with almost NO possibility to customize it almost outsold HP with all the PDAs. and what is the difference between a blackberry and a treo 600 ? nothing except for the OS.

PDAs are down down down. if blackberry/MDA/XDA/treo/hp 6300/mpx type devices were excluded. the sales of "handhelds" would be only the half ! got it ?

*** Post edited by moderator KC 13-Nov-04

[Kati Compton]

Please no personal insults or discussion of politics. Thanks.

[ADBrown]

Actually, cell phones are quite common over here, as is picture and video messaging. We have plenty of camera phones of our own. What I'm talking about it Nokia's tactics in padding their claims about smartphone sales. I know that there are plenty of popular Symbian smartphones in Europe, but that doesn't change the fact that Nokia is artificially padding the numbers by using Symbian inside what would normally be considered non-smartphones. Look up Series 40 and Series 60 for examples.

Two more things. One, there's quite a bit of difference between a Treo 600 and a Blackberry. Two, sales of the Treo 600, the most popular 'converged' device in the U.S., were somewhere around 250,00 units last quarter, compared to a couple of million normal handhelds. Quadruple that to account for the XDAs and the Blackberries and others, and you're still nowhere near half of the market according to the rosiest scenario.

Flip this around for a minute. It's no secret that Europeans have always been in love with their cell phones, even back when your big bragging point was internet access at a sizzling 9600 baud. Isn't it rather obvious that Europe would be the largest market for smartphones, and it's whether they sink or swim elsewhere that's the measure of their success?

[orol]

Actually, cell phones are quite common over here, as is picture and video messaging. We have plenty of camera phones of our own. What I'm talking about it Nokia's tactics in padding their claims about smartphone sales. I know that there are plenty of popular Symbian smartphones in Europe, but that doesn't change the fact that Nokia is artificially padding the numbers by using Symbian inside what would normally be considered non-smartphones. Look up Series 40 and Series 60 for examples.

I know that the cell phones are now more common then they used to be but there is still a huge difference. or at least a year ago it was, I happen to finished my studies @ berkeley, and eventhough the concentration of cell phones here was higher than in the country, still didn't match the concentration here in europe

Two more things. One, there's quite a bit of difference between a Treo 600 and a Blackberry. Two, sales of the Treo 600, the most popular 'converged' device in the U.S., were somewhere around 250,00 units last quarter, compared to a couple of million normal handhelds. Quadruple that to account for the XDAs and the Blackberries and others, and you're still nowhere near half of the market according to the rosiest scenario.

well treo isn't selling extremely well in europe. but e.g. HTC sold almost around 500.000 per quater. then we have got SE and nokia with it's communicator Pxxx or 9xxx series respecively. even those converged devices outsold PDAs you can find them under these 21%.

Flip this around for a minute. It's no secret that Europeans have always been in love with their cell phones, even back when your big bragging point was internet access at a sizzling 9600 baud. Isn't it rather obvious that Europe would be the largest market for smartphones, and it's whether they sink or swim elsewhere that's the measure of their success?
the same goes for PDAs in europe, the sales of PDAs in europe were very very low in the first place. palm has almost no presence here. further more because people got it that it's wiser (for them) to carry only one device. and the reason pretty much is, that in europe many people even don't buy watches since they check the time on the cell phones. and the coverage is not comparable with the US. but it's for obvious reason, the coverage acoss the US is poor since its' a big country and you have various systems operating over there, whereas in europe there is only GSM. so building networsk is easyier, and you can roam of course accross the europe too.

e.g. now there is a big trend to put an mp3 player in the phone (it was radio 1-2 years ago but now they put htem both).

so those are the reason why cell phones thus smartphones are doing so well in europe and not in the US.

Edit: Quotes fixed by Moderator JR.

[kerphis]

The thing is that even though so many "smartphones" shipped, how many users are really using them as "samrtphones"? Here in Asia, camera phones are so common, but to be frank, I only took less than 5 pictures since I've got my phone almost 2 years ago. How many users use the data sync function to sync their calendar to their PC? How many of them knows how to install applications into their smartphones? To most of people, it's just a phone to make and answer phone calls and do some SMS stuff, that's it.

[Jonathan1]

I think Palm will go down in history as the stupidest company ever to grace the computer industry. I mean they have had YEARS to compete. YEARS!
There are two sides to that. It took Microsoft 8 years to catch Palm. 8 YEARS! (keep in mind, Palm's lead was only 6 months - the Pilot1000 came out April '96 while CE devices came out that Fall). Microsoft was able to pour mucho resources into CE/PPC without needing to come close to breaking even (nevermind making a profit). There's no way Palm could compete with that forever.



True. But keep in mind that Microsoft's attitude towards the PDA market has never been one of bullish headlong strides. I mean for the love of god look at the differences between Pocket PC 2000, 2002, 2003, 2003SE. I wouldn't call the differences ground breaking. In fact the transition from Palm Sized PC to Pocket PC was the single biggest jump that MS has ever done with their PDA line. I liken it to the jump from 3.11 to 9x. We've yet to see a jump to 2K or XP. We are currently stuck in 9x land IMHO. Microsoft's almost lazy attitude has left Palm with more then enough time to compete. The simple fact of the matter is from day one they have bucked against upgradging their OS. I distinctly remember in Spring of 2001 at CES there was a wanna be round table discussion on PDA's. And the Palm rep who I think was the CEO of the week said outright that Palm users don't want color or sound. Palm has bucked the trend since day one. Only once they realized that they had no other choice did they add some of this functionality but even to this day its still piss poor. Some of the core capabilities that Pocket PC users have taken for granted since Palm Sized Device days are still only been talked about with POS.
Palm has squandered at minimum a 4 year opportunity that has all but disappeared and if Palm can’t release a current, robust, up to date OS that can take on PPC head to head in 4 years they deserve to go out of business in a big way. Again I want to know what they have been doing these last 4 years and again I’m thinking putt putt golf.