BUSINESS
PDA shipments tumble in 2002
29-01-2003
by Andrew McLindon
Global PDA shipments fell by nearly 10 percent in 2002, as businesses remained unconvinced about the benefits of the technology.
Research firm Dataquest said 12.1 million PDAs were shipped worldwide in 2002, down 9.1 percent from the year before. According to the company, preliminary figures suggested that around 70 percent of PDA purchases are made by consumers with the more lucrative enterprise sector still reluctant to invest in the devices.
"The enterprise market has been stagnant because of poor economic conditions and a perception that PDAs are not yet capable of delivering sufficient return on investment," said Todd Kort, principal analyst for Dataquest's computing platforms worldwide group. "The business sector market is still another year away from embracing PDAs."
The leader in the PDA sector remains Palm. It shipped 4.4 million units in 2002, which was nearly three times as many as its nearest competitor, HP. However, Palm did suffer a 12 percent fall in the amount it shipped during the year.
Sony came in at third place after it increased its shipments by over 160 percent to 1.3 million units, while Handspring was fourth on the back of shipping 700,000 units, a 49 percent decline from the year before.
Toshiba, which entered the PDA market in late 2001 in Japan, made the biggest impact on the sector in 2002 by shipping 450,000 devices to take fifth place in the listing.
The Dataquest figures do not include smart phones such as the Handspring Treo 300 or O2's XDA.
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