[mmace]

But when you include enterprise sales either direct from the OEM or wholesalers, the picture changes. Question: Does the NPD retail include internet sales like Amazon, Buy.com and MobilePlanet.com?

NPD issues weekly sales reports that cover only the major retail chains. It also puts out a monthly report that includes a much broader set of retailers, plus commercial resellers and e-tailers.

NPD says commercial resellers are "companies like CDW." That channel is almost 100% sales to organizations (corporations, government, etc).

E-tailers are "companies like Amazon.com."

Two things are not covered in the reports I get:

--Direct shipment from the manufacturer.

--Sales from distributors, who sometimes sell to both retailers and corporations. They're not included in the retail report because you'd get double-counting of the units they send to retailers.

Palm has somehting like 20-25M devices out there with Palm OS on it (includes licensees) going back to the original Palm Pilot. Is that range fair?

About 25 million Palm OS handhelds have been shipped to date. Based on our research, we think about 18-20 million of those are still in use. No one is completely sure of the retirement rate for either old Palm OS handhelds or old PPC systems. In both cases, a lot of the units were bought by early adopters who are more likely to upgrade frequently, so you might expect a lot of retirement. But because handheld sales grew so rapidly in 2000-2001, most of the installed base is still pretty recent hardware, which would point to lower retirement.

Mike
CCO, PalmSource Inc.

[mmace]

But when you include enterprise sales either direct from the OEM or wholesalers, the picture changes. Question: Does the NPD retail include internet sales like Amazon, Buy.com and MobilePlanet.com?

NPD issues weekly sales reports that cover only the major retail chains. It also puts out a monthly report that includes a much broader set of retailers, plus commercial resellers and e-tailers.

NPD says commercial resellers are "companies like CDW." That channel is almost 100% sales to organizations (corporations, government, etc).

E-tailers are "companies like Amazon.com."

Two things are not covered in the reports I get:

--Direct shipment from the manufacturer.

--Sales from distributors, who sometimes sell to both retailers and corporations. They're not included in the retail report because you'd get double-counting of the units they send to retailers.

Palm has somehting like 20-25M devices out there with Palm OS on it (includes licensees) going back to the original Palm Pilot. Is that range fair?

About 25 million Palm OS handhelds have been shipped to date. Based on our research, we think about 18-20 million of those are still in use. No one is completely sure of the retirement rate for either old Palm OS handhelds or old PPC systems. In both cases, a lot of the units were bought by early adopters who are more likely to upgrade frequently, so you might expect a lot of retirement. But because handheld sales grew so rapidly in 2000-2001, most of the installed base is still pretty recent hardware, which would point to lower retirement.

Mike
CCO, PalmSource Inc.

[jlc, just jlc]

As a consultant, I trave alot and work with a variety of companies, and I see a lot of older Palms - generally III's, although a few pre-3Com units pop up occassionally. Plenty of Handspring models as well. Most of the older ones are used by people who only want PIM functionality, and they do that quite well.