Gartner: Research In Motion Led Worldwide PDA Industry to 7 Percent Growth in First Quarter of 2006

Courtesy of Tekrati Research News comes a new report from Gartner that finds "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. The industry's growth rate was mainly attributed to Research In Motion's (RIM) sales of BlackBerry units. Overall, the results were slightly higher than Gartner's shipment forecast of 3.4 million units for the quarter."

Todd Kort at Gartner said, "The average selling price of PDAs fell 2.7 percent compared with one year ago to $395, mostly because of the lack of many new models entering the market in the quarter and commanding premium prices. Many wireless carriers are bypassing Enhanced Data for Global Evolution (EDGE) in favor of Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), which along with a shortage of UMTS chips, is resulting in a slowdown in new cellular PDA launches."

Gartner attributed the industry's growth rate mainly to "Research In Motion's (RIM) sales of BlackBerry units. RIM's worldwide PDA shipments grew 30.8 percent in the first quarter of 2006. RIM accounted for 25.5 percent of all PDA shipments in the quarter. RIM shipped approximately 1.45 million BlackBerry units in the first quarter, but 517,000 of these were BlackBerry 71xx models that Gartner classifies as smartphones."

Gartner totals "do not include smartphones, such as the Treo 700w and BlackBerry 71xx, but do include cellular PDAs, such as the iPAQ 65xx and Nokia E61." Manufacturer highlights include:

• Palm PDA shipments declined 25.2 percent, as its attention has shifted to Palm's Treo smartphone business. Palm PDA shipments are at their lowest level since 1998. However, Treo shipments were 581,000, with an estimated 20 percent of these being the new Treo 700w. Treo shipments are recorded in Gartner's quarterly smartphones report.
• Hewlett-Packard's iPAQ shipments fell 29.9 percent in the first quarter. Gartner analysts said the long delay of the iPAQ 69xx series has hurt HP, especially with the iPAQ 65xx series still running Windows Mobile 2003.
• Mio Technology has taken the lead in PDAs with integrated GPS capabilities and is faring especially well in Europe and Asia/Pacific. Mio Technology is on pace to sell more than 1 million such PDAs in 2006.
• Dell Axim shipments declined 34 percent in the first quarter of 2006. The bulk of Dell's sales were its flagship model X51v with a 624 MHz processor and 256MB flash read-only memory (ROM).

Operating system highlights include:

• Microsoft's Windows Mobile surpassed the 50 percent threshold for the first time in first quarter of 2006, with a share of 52.6 percent.
• RIM OS was ranked second at 25.5 percent market share.
• Palm OS at 13.4 percent, was ranked third.
• Symbian at 3.6 percent and Linux at 1.2 percent, rounded out the top five.