PalmOne, HP, Research In Motion and Dell led the worldwide PDA market in Q3 2004. Worldwide personal digital assistant (PDA) shipments exceeded 2.8 mln units, as Microsoft Windows CE operating system licensees surpassed the Palm OS for the first time in Q3 2004, according to Gartner. The Microsoft Windows CE operating system accounted for 48.1% of worldwide PDA shipments in Q3 2004. Palm OS units represented 29.8% of the market, down from 46.9% market share in the same period last year.
Preliminary Worldwide PDA Vendor Shipment Estimates for Q3 2004 (Units)
Q3 2004 Q3 2003
Q3 2004 Market Q3 2003 Market Growth
Company Shipments Share(%) Shipments Share(%) (%)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
PalmOne 748,950 26.2 863,993 34.3 -13.3
Hewlett-Packard 692,113 24.2 578,500 23.0 19.6
Research In Motion 565,000 19.8 123,775 4.9 356.5
Dell 185,300 6.5 134,813 5.4 37.4
Symbol Technologies 63,521 2.2 72,690 2.9 -12.6
Others 603,923 21.1 743,375 29.5 -18.8
Total 2,858,807 100.0 2,517,146 100.0 13.6
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: Totals do not include smartphones such as the Treo 600 or
BlackBerry 7100 but include wireless PDAs such as the iPAQ 6315.
Source: Gartner Dataquest (November 2004)
PalmOne continued to lead the worldwide market in PDA hardware shipments, but its shipments declined 13.3% in Q3 2004. PalmOne’s market share totaled 26.2%, but Hewlett-Packard and Research In Motion showed substantial increases in shipments in Q3 2003.