Although worldwide handheld shipments were up worldwide, Palm OS shipments fell enough that Pocket PCs edged past them for the first quarter ever.
A market study by Gartner Dataquest for third quarter of 2004 show an overall rise in handheld shipments worldwide of 13.3%, but for the first time ever Palm OS wasn't the most widely shipped OS since its debut a decade ago.
Palm OS shipments, according to Gartner, are expected to total 4.4 million units this year. However, that is a 23% decline overall from 2003. At the same time, Pocket PC shipments are expected to rise 15% over 2003 to total 5 million units. All told, Microsoft Windows Mobile licensees shipped 60% more units than PalmSource Palm OS licensees in quarter 3.
palmOne still held onto the top spot worldwide with 26.2% of sales, although that is a 13.3% decline from quarter 3 of 2003. In a close second place was HP with 24.2% of sales. After a surprise surge this year of 356.5%, RIM has pulled into a healthy third place with 19.8% of the market. Dell, the second largest Pocket PC maker, also had a surge in sales in 2003 of 37.4%, bringing its market share up to 6.5% worldwide and 9.1% in the US. Rounding out the top 5 was Symbol Technologies with 2.2%. Symbol makes industrial-targeted handhelds based on both Palm OS and Windows Mobile.
It should be noted that these percentages apply only to the handheld market, which for the purposes of this study excludes the widely-popular palmOne Treo 600. The Treo line has had a long history of reclassification, and often bounces back and forth between different market categories in different studies. Gartner also expects palmOne's shares to rise again in quarter 4, as Palm OS devices generally do better around Christmas than their Windows Mobile counterparts, but the story could change come 2005.
Also unclear from Gartner's study is the global distribution of sales. HP took the lead in Europe last year, while palmOne has still held the lead in the US market by a wide margin. However, according to Gartner RIM BlackBerries outsold even HP by 30% in the United States, a dramatic surge for what was once a marginal product line.
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