Handheld Market Up or Down in 2003?

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.asp?Symbol=US:PALM&Feed=RTR&Date=20030114&ID=2234332">http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.asp?Symbol=US:PALM&Feed=RTR&Date=20030114&ID=2234332</a><br /><br />UBS Warburg, a Wall Street brokerage firm, has released a study they did on the tech industry as a whole this afternoon after the market closed. Overall, they predict the tech sector to increase 4% in 2003 versus 2002. The study was based on 85 Chief Information Officers of global companies. So these guys control all of the IT spending from the likes of GE, 3M, GM, Ford, and Boeing. That may sound like a small number of people compared to the number of companies out there, but it is a significant share of IT spending when it comes to the global economy and there isn't any reason to expect a huge shift up or down if more CIOs from multinational companies were polled.<br /><br />So, who benefits? "Microsoft Corp, the world's largest software maker, and hardware and services companies International Business Machines Corp., Dell Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. are among the firms expected to benefit most from the spending uptick, the survey said."<br /><br />Then there was this comment. "But handheld computer maker Palm Inc. (PALM) and Oracle Corp., the world's second largest software company, are likely to receive less in 2003 versus 2002."<br /><br />No more details were given, so I don't know if this is indicative of a declining handheld market in 2003 or just that Palm continues to decline in the minds of the enterprise. What do you think?

[nz0eBoy]

With the price of many pda's coming down, like the Axim for example, and the merging of phone and pda technology I expect the handheld market to do a little better than the remainder of the market.

In the home a family unit can get away with one PC in the home, but the likes of the 'DINKYS' (Double Income, No Kids) are likely to have one PC and two handhelds.

I also see use in schools and universities as an increasing market also.

[daS]

It seems we have general agreement here.

With the lower prices from Dell and the greater feature set from HP (h5450) plus new PPC/PE devices for CDMA as well as GSM/GPRS - all in the first few weeks - this should be an excellent year for the Pocket PC. :D

As enterprise customers look to save money, they will find that a Pocket PC can do much of what they have been giving employees laptops for at a much lower TCO. Not only are the devices less expensive to purchase, but support costs - such as help desks - are less for the Pocket PC than a laptop.

[octop8]

well, believe it or not, I am actually with that particular brokerage firm (but not in research) and the view here is exactly that - the prices of PPCs and Palms are converging with PPCs definitely having the edge in functionality.