Global PDA shipments totalled 4.5 million units in the third quarter of 2006 – a 31.9% increase from the third quarter of 2005, according to analyst Gartner, while the average selling price (ASP) of PDAs in the third quarter of 2006 declined 13% from the same period last year to $351.
“An influx of new cellular PDAs which are subsidised to some degree by wireless carriers resulted in a significant drop in ASP and pushed the market to the highest shipments level in PDA market history,” said Todd Kort, principal analyst in Gartner’s Computing Platforms Worldwide group.
According to Gartner, much of the growth in the PDA market in the third quarter of 2006 was generated by cellular PDAs such as Danger’s (T-Mobile) Sidekick 3, Nokia E61/E62 and Motorola Q.
“The Sidekick has achieved near cult status as a wireless messaging device among the 15-to-25 age group in the U.S., which propelled it to nearly 300 % growth in the third quarter of 2006,” Kort said. “We have not seen the consumer marketplace gravitate toward a particular PDA model like this since Palm’s peak of popularity over five years ago.”
Palm continued to recede from the PDA market, primarily because it doesn’t have a PDA model that incorporates cellular capabilities and its current line is aging. However, the company is primarily focused on the Treo and its shipments totaled 484,000, but these are excluded from Gartner’s PDA numbers because they are smartphones.