14 DAY TRIAL // While there are a lot of potential buyers for the mobile computing systems in general, it looks as if the desirability of a PDA went down the drain since important manufacturers and vendors are discontinuing their production because of low sales. According to the news site ArsTechnica, the PDA market went down like a rock, decreasing by 43.5 percent, during a single year, between the second quarter of 2006 and the second quarter of 2007.
The bad news does not stop here as most market research companies believe that the good days of the PDA systems are gone and their conclusions are supported by the fact that this year alone, sales dropped again, this time with a further 20 percent. As the market becomes so weak, manufacturers and vendors are reorienting themselves towards more profitable areas and letting the PDA market segment die. Big names, such as Dell which reduced its Axim PDA family offerings to only 23,975 units shipped, and the joint German and Japanese venture Fujitsu-Siemens, which shipped 21,482 units worldwide during this quarter, are going to leave the PDA business for good.
"The market as a whole is still contracting, and other vendors, with fewer resources and less distribution, may be forced to withdraw from the market altogether. With double-digit negative growth continuing to characterize the market, IDC expects the handheld device market to contract further before it reaches a stable point", according to an analyst from the market research firm IDC. The number one PDA manufacturer and seller is Palm, situated much in front of competing firms like Dell and Fujitsu-Siemens. While Palm tries very hard to regain some of its glory with the latest PDA named Foleo, the global handheld market is collapsing and even if it will never go away completely, the PDA market is very likely to survive as a minority market.
The PDA market collapse is not something really new, since such a process takes a number of years to gain momentum. Since the development of the smartphone, the PDA had a bad day, which culminated back in 2006 when the PDA market was selling less than the smartphone one. While other mobile markets, like the laptop one for example, are thriving and expanding, the PDA segment may very well be ticking away its last days.