"Worldwide personal digital assistant (PDA) shipments totaled 2.75 million units in the second quarter of 2004, a 12 percent increase from the second quarter of 2003, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc. The year-over-year growth rate broke a string of 10 consecutive quarterly shipment declines," reports Gartner in a press release.
"In terms of PDA operating systems shipments, Palm OS continued to lead the market with a worldwide market share of 41.7 percent in the second quarter of 2004, but its market share was down from the second quarter of 2003 when it accounted for 51 percent of the market. Windows CE's market share in the second quarter of 2004 reached 36.6 percent, up slightly from the same period last year when its market share totaled 36.3 percent. RIM's share of the PDA OS market increased to 18.6 percent, up from 5.3 percent market share in the second quarter of 2003."
Comment: Sales of Sony PDA's plunged from 272,638 units to only 174,804, which put it only just ahead of Dell (147,500 units). However, RIM's shipments of BlackBerrys boomed from 131,100 to 510,000 units, only just behind HP/iPaq (529,773).
