Studies Predict the Future of Handhelds, Bluetooth
Market research firm IDC released a study this week that says sales of handhelds will increase 43% this year over last year's sales. This is a noticeable change from their 88% increase on 2000 but not bad considering the slowing world economy. IDC goes on to predict that the handheld market will grow an average of 39% per year through 2005, with shipments reaching 70.9 million that last year.
They predicted that the Asia-Pacific region to be the real area of growth, increasing at an annual rate of 60%. Growth in the U.S. will not be as rapid. Last year, the U.S. accounted for 49% of all handheld sales. By 2005, that will decrease to 39%.
A separate study by ARC Group predicted that, by 2006, more than 500 million devices making use of Bluetooth will be used worldwide. The bad news is that these will almost entirely be on high-end devices because the Bluetooth chipset will remain too expensive for consumers until 2006. They found that Bluetooth chipsets will be between $11 and $25 by the end of this year but predict that they won't fall below the Bluetooth SIG's target price of $5 before 2006.
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RE: 1st
RE: 1st
http://www.stormpages.com/phs
RE: 1st
The original idea of Bluetooth is to make a cheaper and simple wireless connectivity. It is very much like Motocycle vs. Car. You choose the one fits your needs.
2nd
RE: 2nd
Rule #2: Never trust IDC
IDC puts out the worst drivel out of all the big firms (Gartner, Giga, etc...)
Since their core research sucks so bad, they try to outdo other firms by going extreme in all of their so-called predictions.
RE: 2nd
500 million devices - that would be a stretch. Possible? No idea. But even if their prediction is 500% over, thats still a lot devices.
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mondo
Sydney, Australia
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