Mobile data access, particularly
wireless e-mail, drove the worldwide PDA market to record shipments of
17.7 million units in 2006, an 18.4 percent increase from 2005,
according to Gartner, Inc.

“60 percent of all PDAs shipped in 2006 offered cellular connectivity,
up from 47 percent in 2005,” said Todd Kort, principal analyst in
Gartner’s Computing Platforms Worldwide group. “Forty-eight percent of
all PDAs shipped in 2006 were purchased by enterprises. This was about
the same percentage as one year ago due to the strong sales to
consumers and prosumers of devices, such as the Sidekick 3, MIO
Technology GPS devices and the Motorola Q..”

Research In Motion continued to lead the PDA market, but its product
mix has been rapidly shifting toward smartphones following the
September launch of the BlackBerry Pearl. RIM shipped more than 1.8
million BlackBerry devices in the fourth quarter of 2006, with an
estimated 915,000 considered to be PDAs (the 87xx) and the remainder
being smartphones. RIM’s PDA growth slowed to 10 percent to 3,510,927
units out of a total of about 6.2 million BlackBerry devices shipped
in 2006.

Palm’s PDA shipments declined 29 percent in 2006 as the company
continued to focus on the smartphone market with its Treo product.
Hewlett-Packard is another vendor experiencing declining fortunes in
the PDA market. HP shipped 2.3 million PDAs in 2006, accounting for
9.7 percent of all PDAs. The one bright spot for HP was that its
flagship models, the iPAQ 68xx and 69xx devices, comprised about
one-third of HP’s total shipments.

Sharp ranked fifth in 2006 with 1,438,218 million PDAs shipped.
Approximately 1.1 million of these were the Sidekick, primarily
marketed by T-Mobile. However, Sharp’s Linux PDAs fared poorly,
with fewer than 30,000 shipped in 2006.

Microsoft Windows Mobile devices tend be more enterprise-oriented than
devices based on other platforms (with the exception of the RIM
BlackBerry). However, in the more consumer-oriented fourth quarter,
Windows Mobile achieved its highest sales ever with PDA OS shipments
exceeding 3.5 million compared with 2.2 million units in the fourth
quarter of 2005. This strong quarter helped Windows Mobile to solidify
its stronghold on the market with 56.1 percent market share for the
full year. In 2006, shipments of Windows Mobile PDAs grew 38.8 percent
to just under 10 million.

Gartner Dataquest defines a PDA as a data-centric handheld computer
weighing less than 1 pound that is primarily designed for use with
both hands. These devices use an open-market OS supported by third-
party applications that can be added into the device by end users.
They offer instant-on/off capability and synchronization of files with
a PC. A PDA may offer WAN support for voice, but these are data-first,
voice-second devices. Examples include the RIM BlackBerry 8707v, HP
iPAQ 69xx, Nokia E61, Motorola Q, T-Mobile Dash and Sidekick 3.

Smartphones offer all the attributes of a PDA, except that smartphones
are voice-centric with data access as a secondary capability, and are
designed for primarily one-handed operation. Examples include the Palm
Treo 750v, RIM BlackBerry Pearl, Orange SPV C700, Nokia E60 and Sony
Ericsson P990i.