Pocket PC gains fast on Palm share
InfoWorld | at | by Mike
PDA's based on Microsoft's Pocket PC operating system now account for 30 percent of the worldwide PDA market compared to 48.6 percent for PalmSource's market leading Palm OS, according to research released Monday by Dataquest. Pocket PC-based handheld computing systems reached the 30 percent market share level in the third quarter of 2002, up from a 16.2 percent share in the third quarter last year, according to Dataquest figures. Worldwide sales of PDAs in the third quarter of 2002 reached 2.64 million, 0.9 percent up on the 2.61 million sold in the equivalent quarter last year.
The gain of the Pocket PC OS against Palm was helped by the strong impact made by Toshiba in the market. From a trickle of sales in the third quarter last year, Toshiba has sold 144,000 PDAs this year to garner a 5.5 percent share. A further challenge to Palm's leadership is expected when Dell Computer releases a Pocket PC-based PDA later this year, Dataquest said.