BlackBerry growth boosts PDA sales.
In 2006Q1 PDA sales were up almost 7% to 3.65 million. The growth figures, from Gartner, include the sales of BlackBerry devices, which grew 30% against declines for Palm, HP and Dell. The average price of PDAs fell by 2.7% , which is attributed to a lack of new models.
Gartner analyst, Roberta Cozza: "RIM is still growing, but in the second half of 2006 we expect other vendors to come out with products with integrated keyboards to rival the BlackBerry. In Europe, Nokia will probably be RIM's biggest competitive threat when it releases its E61 wireless PDA, while Palm will be RIM's biggest challenger in the US."
Research by IDC suggests that "handheld devices" (PDAs and similar devices, but not devices with telephony capabilities -- so taking out BlackBerry sales) are in decline. "The organisation's latest worldwide Handheld Qview report reveals the total number of devices shipped during the first quarter of 2006 totaled 1.5m, a drop of 22.3 per cent year-on-year."
Source: two Computing articles and one from The Register.
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