Worldwide handheld sales continue to plummet

Posted on August 3rd, 2006

The market for traditional handhelds continues to shrink, as it has done for the past three years, with the last few remaining players in this spacing taking big hits in unit sales. Smartphones are replacing the PDA, unfortunately not fast enough to offset the decline. Palm still remains the leader of this dying segment, with tallying sales of 475,000 units sold…down from 638,376 in the year ago quarter. HP reports a dismal 260,000 units sold, while Dell, who remains at the number three slot, is scraping bottom with a mere 132,050 units moved. What these figures show is that the bottom is falling out of the PDA market at a quickening pace. In fact, the numbers are so low now that the breakers are finally kicking in. By that I mean that the numbers of units sold literally don’t justify the cost of development. That’s especially true for Dell, where a recent report from DigiTImes indicates that Dell secretly ceased manufacturing its line of Axim Pocket PC handhelds late last year and are trying to clear out remaining inventory.

Dell isn’t alone either. HP will soon follow its PC rival out the door, focussing entirely on Smartphones, leaving only Palm in this dwindling market. Naturally the more dimwitted among the Palm fanboy community will see that as some kind of victory, after all…Pocket PC will be for all intents and purposes a dead product category. However the cheering will be short lived, as Palm is doing precisely what Dell and HP are right now. As a matter of fact, I’m betting that Palm’s entire handheld line has already ceased production, with no plans for further development. By early next year or mid-year there will no longer be any Palm handhelds on the market.