No voice support for handhelds? No sales either!

It's not us declaring handhelds officially on a death row, but just looking at sale results will clearly show that users will not go for handhelds with no voice support when smartphones can pretty much cover whatever PDAs offer.

According to recent data provided by International Data Corp., sales of no-voice handhelds have dropped for the 7th consecutive quarter. If that doesn't mean things aren't looking up for this type of products, what will? Distributing handhelds without voice support has dropped almost 17% compared to last year, which leads to a total of 1.6 million units shipped. Compared to the second quarter this year, the sales drop is 8.8%.

With more devices like PDAs integrating voice modules and with prices for such products going down quarter after quarter, basic PDAs don't exactly face the challenge and should become obsolete shortly. The last hope for such devices is integrating GPS or WiFi connectivity, which could boost sales up to a point. Competing with smartphones that practically do it all isn't the easiest task and producers need to come with new ideas to stay in the game.