"Driven by its success in the enterprise, Blackberry maker Research In Motion Ltd toppled PalmOne Inc from the No 1 slot in the first quarter in the handheld computer market, a position the latter company has held for a half dozen years," reports TechWeb News.
"The change was not unexpected, given PalmOne's decision to focus on the nascent smart-phone market with its Treo device, Todd Kort, analyst for Gartner Inc said."
In brief, PalmOne's Q1 shipments fell by 26.3% from 834,591 to 614,750 units while RIM's jumped 75.6% from 405,000 to 711,000 units.
"In PDA operating systems, Redmond, Wash.-based, Microsoft Corp. led the market with Windows CE, which increased its market share to 46% from 40.2%, Gartner said. Shipments increased 43% in the first quarter to 1.6 million from 1.1 million a year ago," says Gartner."
Symbian had a 9.9% market share, while Linux managed 0.8%.
"Linux saw a 21.6% drop in shipments, which led to a half-point drop in market share."
