Ho John Lee’s Weblog

I have a box full of various PDAs and related accessories in the closet, waiting to make their way onto eBay. Over the past several years, I have lived with Palm-based organizers, WinCE-based organizers, Psion-based organizers, and other widgets intended as personal information devices of one sort or another.

During the past couple of years, though, I’ve noticed that I have gradually shifted away from using PDAs and notebook computers, and toward using paper and various phones, mostly cellular. I had decided that although I liked having my contact data and calendar with me on the PDA, I didn’t like carrying yet another item, and have learned to live with the more limited directories on the cell phones. I’ve noticed that the cell phones mostly have organizers on them now but have been reluctant to make yet the investment in time and effort to learn to work with yet another system, as I seem to be doing ok checking in at my desk to look at the calendar periodically. I’ve looked from time to time at getting a Treo or PocketPC or Blackberry phone, but what I actually use these days is a Nokia 6820, which is small, has a simple camera, and also has a foldout keyboard for the rare occasions that I send text messages from the phone.

In my e-mail this morning, I see that In-Stat’s latest research report confirms that I’m not alone. They want $3,495 to read the whole report, probably not worth it unless you’re already subscribing to their service.

PDA Market Faces Steep Decline

The traditional PDA is heading for significant declines in sales, and in fact is nearing the end of its life as a major product segment, according to In-Stat (http://www.in-stat.com). Unit shipments reached
only 8.7 million units in 2004, down from 10 million in 2003, the high-tech market research firm says. The outlook for upcoming years is not good, as the PDA market will have a negative Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of -21.5% during the 2004-2009 period.

By 2009, it is expected that this segment will be composed of devices designed for specific vertical markets and low-end products. The market decline will occur as users switch to other products, such as
smartphones and portable media players, a natural evolution of the category.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 1st, 2005 at 4:54 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.