Article: PDA Sales Decline in 2002

Article: PDA Sales Decline in 2002 "It was a tough year for the PDA industry, as global sales fell 9.1 percent from 2001 totals, according to research firm Gartner Dataquest.
The big three -- Palm, Hewett-Packard and Handspring -- each shipped about 600,000 fewer PDAs last year than in 2001. Gartner analyst Todd Kort pointed to poor economic conditions and a lack of compelling devices as reasons for the decline. In addition, Kort said the slow adoption of PDAs by enterprises has also hurt the industry.
Only about 30 percent of PDAs are purchased by business users, Kort said. Part of the reason for this is that the wireless PDAs that enterprises seek are still expensive and can be difficult to deploy."...
Palm still holds the lead in the operating system market, with 55.2 percent of worldwide shipments. Windows CE accounted for 25.7 percent of PDA sales, up about 7 percent from the previous year.
"I think Palm can maintain 50 percent or more of the PDA business in 2003," said Kort. He predicts the $99 Palm Zire, which comprised about a third of Palm's shipments in the fourth quarter, will be priced closer to $50 or $60 by Christmas, competing with basic calculators.
In the U.S. market, Sony jumped from the No. 6 position in 2001 to the No. 2 position in 2002, as its shipments increased 351.8 percent. Handspring, which slipped to the No. 4 position after being third in sales in 2001, is exiting the PDA market entirely to focus exclusively on smart phones, said Kort."