The PDA deathwatch continues

It's a bittersweet deathwatch for the geek blogs: With the rise of the hybrid cell phone-PDA, each quarter brings fewer plain old handheld computers. Do kids today even remember the PalmPilot, let alone Apple's Newton?

Yesterday saw another nail hammered in the coffin, as TechWeb, among others, broke the news of the latest IDC report showing the 10th consecutive quarterly decline in PDA sales: "The number of handheld devices shipped in the second quarter ended June 30 dropped 26.3 percent from the same period a year ago to 1.4 million units."

Still, rumors of extinction may be overstated. Australian tech news site ARNnet.com digs up an expert (apparently the owner of something called the "Organizer King") who says that "although the phones offer a lot of functions, they still don't do all of it very well" -- a fact, he says, that assures an ongoing market for PDAs. Red Herring comes to the same conclusion, drawing from a recent In-Stat survey which shows that "in spite of the growing popularity of smart phones, consumers aren’t yet ready to trade in their laptops and PDAs for a single, do-it-all device."

Hey, some still swear by the Rolodex. Of course, perhaps the iPhone will change all that.

Photo by YGGG
Posted by Oliver Ryan 10:17 AM 0 Comments comment | Add a Comment

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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.