Worldwide PDA shipments grew by 6.6% to 3.65 million units in the first quarter of 2006, according to a Gartner Dataquest report. This was due mainly to the 30.8% growth Research In Motion's sales of BlackBerrys -- not including sales of BlackBerry 71xx models, which Gartner classifies as smartphones.
Palm's PDA sales fell by 25.2%, not including sales of 581,000 Treo smartphones, which are now its main business. "Palm PDA shipments are at their lowest level since 1998," says Gartner.
The main Windows Mobile suppliers, HP and Dell, saw sales plunge, but Windows still grew to take more than half the PDA market -- 52.6% -- for the first time. RIM OS was second at 25.5% followed by Palm OS (13.4%), Symbian (3.6%) and Linux (1.2%).
