Once the underdogs of the handheld industry, wireless handhelds will outnumber the more traditional kind by 2006, says research firm ABI.
Low replacement rates and slow shipments have been paralyzing the PDA industry for some time - but the emergence of converged devices, such as the wireless handheld, may be the latest relief the industry has been seeking. Technology research firm ABI confirms that while wireless handhelds have not gained much traction due, in part, to limitations of existing form factors, new products in this category such as the soon to be launched Treo 600 will change this.
According to ABI Research, wireless handhelds and Smartphones differ in that the former are converged devices with a PDA-based standardized OS like that of Palm OS or Microsoft's Windows Mobile for Pocket PCs. Smartphones, on the other hand, are more similar to standard cellular handsets and employ a related OS. "Wireless handhelds will represent over 50% of the total PDA market by 2006," affirms Kenil Vora, ABI analyst, "unlike Smartphones, which will continue to represent only a small portion of the overall handset market."
One of the findings from ABI's newest report is that the overall PDA market is expected to grow to $10 billion USD by 2008 with a major portion derived from wireless handhelds.
Despite other research claiming an overall decline in the traditional PDA market, ABI says its research contends that this market will actually experience modest growth of 8% CAAG through 2008. ABI's contrarian views stem from different form factors and emerging technology applications for traditional PDAs such as telematics, satellite location, barcode scanning, RFID tracking and digital photography.
Operating Systems will be a major factor for the wireless handheld market as well. Whereas PalmSource is focused solely on this market, Linux and Microsoft also compete in the Smartphone segment with different variants of their OS. In this segment, Symbian's OS dominates the market. "Symbian will continue to garner individual customers for its rather user-friendly and 'sticky' OS," continues Vora, "while Microsoft's Windows Mobile Software for Smartphones will serve to frenzy the enterprise user."
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