Why so few Palm PDAs

[Brjlk]

As far as I know there are only Tungsten & Zire, as for PPCs there are myriads of PDA brands
Why is it so?
Is Palm being gradually swallowed by PPCs?
Monopoly by PalmOne Tungsten? Isn't a vested interested for a company to sell both the OS & the software?

John

[Brjlk]

Isn't a vested interest for a company to sell both the OS & the software?
John

Sorry,
I meant : both the OS and the HARDWARE.

John

[xMist]

Not true at all...

Instead of typing up the huge list, go to these places to see for yourself:

-PalmOS Handhelds (http://www.palmsource.com/products/products.cgi?Cat=Handhelds)
-PalmOS Smartphones (http://www.palmsource.com/products/products.cgi?Cat=Smartphones)

;)

[Brjlk]

Still much less Palm PDAs than PPCs, considering Sony has dropped the Clie production.

John

[Wytnucls]

Quote ' Since quite sometime now the PDA has taken the backseat. With mobile phones getting smarter with Smartphones coming out in the market, few people were looking towards the PDAs leading to lack of sales for these devices. Many PDAs out there now are more like merged products offering functionalities of a mobile phone and a digital diary.

However, times are changing and the fully functional PDAs are back on the sales chart. A report released by the research firm Gartner claims that the sales have grown by almost 25% and a lot of it can be contributed to the fact that people are interesting in having access to their emails on the move through wireless Internet access. The report claimed that almost 55% of PDAs sold in the first three months of this year had Wi-Fi or cellular capability.

Research in Motion has been the biggest beneficiary of this changing trend as they displaced the long reigning champion of PDA PalmOne as the largest seller of PDAs in the market with their blackberry mobile device. It is a huge hit amongst enterprise sector enabling the corporates to stay connected to their office networks on the move.

In the Operating System powering these PDAs, Palm-based devices made up just 20% of the market today down from almost double that last year. Dominating force in this area is now the Windows CE-based devices, which made up 43% of the market. Another market where software giant is looking towards getting a majority stake might not be good news for the industry.

The research however had certain conflicting factors with the researchers taking the recently unveiled PalmOne Treo 650 as a Smartphone instead of a PDA. The device has been a huge success amongst the consumers and the statistics might have been a lot different if it was included in the research.' Unquote.