10-29-2004, 02:00 PM
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Swami
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 4,303
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PDA Sales Continue to Drop? Define PDA!
"If a handheld device doesn't have voice capabilities, a growing number of users around the world aren't interested, according to IDC. For the third straight quarter, shipments of handheld devices such as personal digital assistants fell as some prominent vendors decided to pull back from the market, IDC says. Worldwide shipments totaled 2.1 million units in the third quarter, down 8.7 percent from last year's third quarter. IDC defines a handheld as a device that does not include telephony but may include Internet connectivity��PDAs are in decline as mobile phone vendors have substantially improved the personal information management capabilities of their phones. Most people don't want to carry two separate devices to manage their personal contacts and make phone calls, which has led to increased interest in devices such as PalmOne's Treo 650 and Hewlett-Packard's iPaq h6315.
Hmm, the old One Device/ Two Device argument seems to be going all one way at the moment. (So to speak ;-)) The PC World article argues that Dell and Mitac International have built up market share on the back of low-cost, low-margin devices, which means that they won't succeed in the long term. Hmm, the Dell X50v does not seem to fit the billing and Mitac seem to be doing just nicely with their GPS embedded PPCs. GPS navigation is a huge growth area and it's hard to navigate with a teeny tiny smartphone screen! HP's non-phone iPaqs also bucked the overall trend in recent quarters by growing just under 12%. In the end it may be down to definitions and semantics. So is it a Pocket PC with built in phone, or a phone with built in Pocket PC? In this era of convergence, aren't both PDAs?
We've been saying at PPCT for a while that wirelessly connected Pocket PCs are the future. Wifi, 3G and the smorgasbord of current 2G mobile technologies all add up to powerful set of connection options for voice and data. Add a Bluetooth headset and a 60Gb hard drive into the mix and you would have a huge MP3 player, a PDA and a Phone. Just leave out the camera and you're set. ;-) So, what's your take on the perennial 'PDAs are dying' debate?
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10-29-2004, 02:44 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 316
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So, in essence: "PDAs are dead! Long live PDAs with voice!"
Doesn't the growing market share of convergence devices indicate a boon for PDAs, rather than their demise?
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10-29-2004, 02:46 PM
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Developer & Designer, News Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 12,959
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Jonathon, as you said, I don't...WHAT THE! (This huge moth just flew on to my computer screen). 8O
Okay, it has been dealt with appropriately. :snipersmile: Anyway, enough digressing...
EDIT: Ha! That all just sounded a bit stupid but imagine an 8cm moth landing on your laptop screen. Rather amusing! :roll:
As you said, the way of the future are wireless-enabled Pocket PCs. I believe that too. But now you draw the discussion of what a PDA should be used for.
For PIM? Heck...Palm secured that concept ages ago with their colourless PDAs.
Then you add colour screens, faster processors, multimedia enhancements? Useful innovations or just for a bit of fun? Well, if PIM is all a PDA is used for. I doubt the innovations become useful.
But then you have wireless communication. Without this, you have a somewhat confined mobile world. Yet with this, the options begin to open. You gain access to remote connections, phone calls, data calls, emails, your bank account, Google on-the-go. These then make those colour screens, faster processors, and multimedia enhancements a little more enticing. But add a hard disk? It almost becomes a media player.
So is the PDA dying? The main thing that people should ask themselves is "what do they look for in a PDA"? If it's for PIM, that's fine. But would a host of wireless-enabled options open the door right open? Perhaps. Then what about a camera? Do people really want these? Are they a useful or pointless innovation?
PDA sales may be on the decline, but in my opinion, this changes every time they extract the data. People's attitudes to PDAs change with time. A few years ago, PIM was the priority feature that PDAs had to deliver. Now it is probably PIM and wireless communication. What next?
If companies fail to deliver the products that consumers want, PDA sales are likely to decline. Yet if companies out there are able to respond to consumer wants and we start to see this trend over a few years, PDA sales may very well be on the rise. It's a very subjective issue to discuss... I'm sure we each have our own opinions on this one. 
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10-29-2004, 02:58 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 120
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I am very happy to use my IPAQ for work and entertainment, but personnally am not interested in a bundled camera or phone. I am a photographic pixel hog, and already hate it when I take a good shot that has too few pixels to be printed in a large format. And since I love pixels, the large VGA screen of the 4705 suits me fine. The PocketPC is also my preferred reading platform, so smaller is not better. Also I take my phone places I would never take my PocketPC - horseback riding in the mountains for example. I am happy with the convergence I have - books, maps, music, video, games, word processing and such - but wouldn't want to pay the size and weight penalty for functionality I don't use.
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10-29-2004, 03:17 PM
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Swami
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 4,303
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by DJ Apod
PDA sales may be on the decline, but in my opinion, this changes every time they extract the data. People's attitudes to PDAs change with time. A few years ago, PIM was the priority feature that PDAs had to deliver. Now it is probably PIM and wireless communication. What next?
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Yup, those were the points I was interested in drawing out for discussion. I.e. what is a PDA, what do you demand of it and what will you want it to do next year.
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Originally Posted by DJ Apod
It's a very subjective issue to discuss... I'm sure we each have our own opinions on this one. |
Whcih makes for an interesting discussion. :wink:
I find my wants changing, depending on the device. Sometimes an all-in-one seems appealing, then a smartphone and PDA combo seems the way to go. I'm leaning towards a MS smartphone (maybe the SVP C500) and a Dell X50v with a large CF and SD card. Best of all worlds for me.
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10-29-2004, 03:26 PM
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Developer & Designer, News Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 12,959
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Jonathon Watkins
Whcih makes for an interesting discussion. :wink:
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As interesting as my "pet" moth? :P
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Jonathon Watkins
I find my wants changing, depending on the device. Sometimes an all-in-one seems appealing, then a smartphone and PDA combo seems the way to go. I'm leaning towards a MS smartphone (maybe the SVP C500) and a Dell X50v with a large CF and SD card. Best of all worlds for me.
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Personally, I'm okay with having my phone as a separate entity from my Pocket PC. My Nokia will live on for another few years. 8) What I require as "definite" features in my next Pocket PC are: Wi-Fi, BT, perhaps CIR, although CIR is not a must (all this will give me the wireless communication I want...I'm not too fussed about expanding my options to CDMA, etc. - well, not for the moment anyway); USB would be great to have; and a VGA screen. The other thing I would hope for is for companies to listen to consumer's wants. How often have we asked for WM2003SE updates? And how often have we asked for WMP10 updates? Decreasing consumer expectations, coupled with PalmOne's declining sales are probably the main factors contributing to the decline in PDA sales.
Hopefully, next year's debut of WM2005 will show promise for PDAs in the future.
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10-29-2004, 03:43 PM
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5000+ Posts? I Should OWN This Site!
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 5,133
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If you read these articles (I read either that one or a similar one the other day), they're saying that PDAs are dying because Palm sales are down and because Sony's PDA sales are down (big surprise, as they exited the market...).
However, they also mention that HP's sales are fine, as are Dell's.
So what *I* think is happening is that lots of people who used a PDA *only* for PIM functions are discovering that yes, they can do that with their phones.
It's the rest of the people that are keeping their PDAs.
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10-29-2004, 03:48 PM
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Developer & Designer, News Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 12,959
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Kati Compton
So what *I* think is happening is that lots of people who used a PDA *only* for PIM functions are discovering that yes, they can do that with their phones.
It's the rest of the people that are keeping their PDAs.
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That's a good point. However, a lot of phones out there seem to do a very poor job at helping people with PIM (IMO, anyway). For those that want true functionality for PIM, I'm sure we'll see a slow trend back toward PDAs, whether it be Palm or Pocket PC.
Personally, I would hate to use my Nokia for PIM. Small screen, limited contact information, very poor calendar features, etc. This is why I think smartphones are becoming increasingly popular, yet eventually, I believe there will be a slow move back toward PPC-PE for the raw power Pocket PCs are beginning to deliver.
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10-29-2004, 04:28 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 323
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by DJ Apod
Jonathon, as you said, I don't...WHAT THE! (This huge moth just flew on to my computer screen). 8O
Okay, it has been dealt with appropriately. :snipersmile:
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So, you were debugging your computer!
This is a good time to point out that the first computer bug was, in fact, a moth. It happened at the Naval Weapons Lab in Dahlgren, Virginia, during WWII. The computer was the Mark I, which used electrical relays, NOT electronics. One day a problem was traced to a large moth stuck in one of the relays. It was taped into the logbook as documentation of the problem.
Some people believe this story is apocryphal. However, I heard it direct from the source, Captain Grace Murry Hopper. She was the one who retrieved the moth, and she always mentioned it in her lectures.
OTOH, use of the term "bug" to mean a problem may be older than the moth. I've heard that Thomas Edison described lab glitches as bugs. The moth was the first computer bug, however.
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10-29-2004, 04:40 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 316
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by DJ Apod
Personally, I would hate to use my Nokia for PIM. Small screen, limited contact information, very poor calendar features, etc. This is why I think smartphones are becoming increasingly popular, yet eventually, I believe there will be a slow move back toward PPC-PE for the raw power Pocket PCs are beginning to deliver.
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And I for one welcome that shift.
Although I wouldn't go quite so far as to call your phone a PDA, I do think it's a little unfair to report on the declining sales of PDAs while excluding Treos and Phone Editions from the count. They may be in a new category of PDAs, but they are definitely PDAs.
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