Comments on: Gartner PDA Report for Q1 2006

Worldwide PDA shipments totaled 3.65 million units in the first quarter of 2006, a 6.6 percent increase from the first quarter of last year, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner's numbers primarily reflect handhelds and PDA's (and do not include Treo shipments), however the company does include some RIM smartphone devices that they classify as PDA's with cellular radios.

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The RIM and Palm devices left out

AdamaDBrown @ 5/8/2006 8:38:05 PM #

FYI, because I know how much people around here love math, I have numbers on the devices that were left out of the

Treo sales are estimated at 581,000, comprising 460K 650s and 120K 700ws. This means their total sales were approximately 1,040,000 units, up 5%.

RIM sold about 512,000 7100 series Blackberries, bringing their total numbers up to 1.45 million.

RE: The RIM and Palm devices left out

AdamaDBrown @ 5/8/2006 8:44:57 PM #

Ignore this: not only did I accidently push the button before I finished typing, but I'd missed the inclusion of these stats in the text blurbs surrounding the table.

RE: The RIM and Palm devices left out

Surur @ 5/9/2006 8:15:26 AM #

I wonder what they count the HP 6515 as, handheld or smartphone.

Surur

They said I only argued for the sake of arguing, but after an hour I convinced them they were wrong...

RE: The RIM and Palm devices left out

ginsberg @ 5/11/2006 1:32:38 AM #

The iPAQ 6xxx series are classified by Gartner as cellular PDAs (rather than smartphones) because they are more data-centric than voice-centric and generally are operated using both hands.

Useless numbers

just_little_me @ 5/9/2006 3:25:18 AM #

Whilst Gartner continue to exclude devices such as the Treo, but *include* some RIM devices these numbers will be worthless...

I've got 3 bananas, and you've got 5 chinese gooseberry's - therefore I win!! Go figure.

JLM.

RE: Useless numbers

mbuhboot @ 5/9/2006 6:20:02 AM #

Never the less...

Palm and PalmOS have lost their dominance from a market of 80% to 13-20% in 3 years!

The split of Palm and PalmSource and the bailiing our of Sony CLIE really killed Palm's share!

Moshe

RE: Useless numbers

marcol @ 5/9/2006 11:46:38 AM #

'Notes: Totals do not include smartphones, such as the Treo 700w and BlackBerry 71xx, but include cellular PDAs, such as the iPAQ 65xx and Nokia E61.
Source: Gartner Dataquest (May 2006)'

In the Gartner mind what exactly is the difference between a 'smartphone' and a 'cellular PDA'? It's not hard to make an argument that iPAQ 6515 and Treo 700W are more closely related to each other than they are to the Blackberry 7100 or the Nokia E61.

RE: Useless numbers

marcol @ 5/9/2006 12:02:20 PM #

The the 6515 and E61 are both quite wide. Perhaps there's a Gartner standard pocket and if a device doesn't fit it's classified as a 'cellular PDA'.

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

ChiA @ 5/9/2006 3:38:32 PM #

I simply ignore the Gartner Reports. I will pay closer attention to them when they reveal all the criteria they use in their (apparently arbitary) definitions of smartphone and PDA.

As the above quotation points out, if you pose the "right" questions you can get the "right" answers to suit your position. It remains to be seen just who is posing the "questions" that Gartner is trying to "answer" with its data "manipulation".

"It is commonly said, and more particularly by Lord Shaftesbury, that ridicule is the best test of truth".
Lord Chesterfield

RE: Useless numbers

arielb @ 5/9/2006 5:00:46 PM #

Moshe, you make it sound like 3 years is a short time. Sometimes I think Palm is intentionally doing everything it can to kill off palmOS by their own stupidity and even that won't kill palmos fast enough so they put windows on their treo.

I don't plan to switch because the keyboard on my TG-50 is more important to me than vga, multitasking or the other things. but otherwise that axim X51v would look pretty good to me

RE: Useless numbers

ChiA @ 5/9/2006 6:23:30 PM #

everything it can to kill off palmOS

Ahem, the Palm OS as we know it is already dead - Access have killed off further development of Palm OS 5 and 6.

It's now a question of waiting to see what Phoenix OS will arise from the ashes of Palm OS. It might look like its ancestor, maybe even run the same applications. The thing is, will that Phoenix OS be ALP or something that's been brewing deep within Palm Inc?

RE: Useless numbers

Simony @ 5/9/2006 7:51:26 PM #

Forgive my interjection, but I find it difficult to believe that HP's numbers include shipments for the 65xx units. If that's right, then the implication is that little old Palm is shipping more handhelds (not counting Treos) than HP (counting both handhelds and smartphones). That just doesn't make sense.

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their profits.

RE: Useless numbers

AdamaDBrown @ 5/10/2006 12:41:02 PM #

Well, Gartner says they do. The 6500 had a long series of delays before it shipped, making it obsolete compared to the devices coming from other manufacturers. And HPs sales have been tanking for a long while thanks to their lackluster designs. Even their as-yet upcoming 6900 models aren't even close to being as advanced as they were when they were announced.

RE: Useless numbers

mbuhboot @ 5/10/2006 2:33:12 PM #

Ariel,

3 years is long time to:
(a) loose market share
(b) realize that
(c) do something to gain it back

The problem is that Palm is stuck with (a).

Whant an example of how they can do (c)? (at least my take..)

(a) Intake PalmSource - if they can't manage on their own - bring it back home - fire 80% of the people there, improve coblat and release it.

(b) Build the handheld super mother board - think of TX functionality (BT, WiFi, NVFS, HIRES+), Zire 72 camera module, GPS module and the TC/Treo keyboard support. Now you take this board and make 5 new models coming out each six month - delivering different form factors, different functionality, etc. Think about the following: TC2 - Wifi, BT, Kbd, TC2X - Wifi, BT, Kbd and camera, TC2XL - WiFi, BT, Kbd, camera and HVGA screen (sliding keyboard) etc. Build high-end devices made of metal, low end made of plastic.

(c) Support Skype (=finance part of the development!) to introudce skype support, support Opera to provide Opera browser. Make them available to be purchased at reduced price for new customers.

Start working on PalmOS over Linux - if a bunch of hackers made a unix distro run on 4-5 models in six months - a thousend developers can make the distro an OS in less than a year.

All of this does not require much of them - simply they need to do it.

Moshe

RE: Useless numbers

ChiA @ 5/11/2006 5:47:08 AM #

Intake PalmSource - if they can't manage on their own - bring it back home - fire 80% of the people there, improve coblat and release it.

It's a bit late for that now, seeing that Access owns PalmSource. Palm can always make an offer but Access will want extra on top of the $350million(?) it paid for PalmSource assuming Access want to sell in the first place. Besides are Garnet and Cobalt even worth that kind of money? Garnet is old and Palm didn't even want to use Cobalt on its devices; I doubt they will want to own Cobalt OS.

Suggesting Palm should buy PalmSource is like suggesting Russia should buy Alaska back from the USA. It may help them out but it's now well beyond reasonable possibility.