PDA Sales Fall for Third Year in Row

A reader writes "Reports ZDNet on how PDA sales have slipped for a third year in a row now at a five-year low." Anyone have numbers for sales of cell phones? My cell phone has almost every piece of functionality I got from my PDA 3 years ago. Plus a crappy camera. Still no dice roller.

Re:There can be only one...

[Eric Giguere]

Note that smartphone sales [mobilizedsoftware.com] are on the rise. Standalone PDAs are suffering, but the integrated devices are taking off.

Eric
J2ME articles and stuff [ericgiguere.com]

OSX

[Psychofreak]

MAC is supposed to natively talk to palm devices. I do not have first had knowledge, but Mom is the Technology coordinator at her gradeschool where everything is Macintosh. She has an older Symbol scanner/palm like they use in hospitals to help keep track of hardware. I know she didn't have to load any new software to get the palm and the Mac to talk.

I am using Windows and Linux, but I gave up trying to use a palm a while ago. I have a Garmin IQue that I really need to get working again, especially since I have a new job that puts me on the road a bit.

I hope someone has first hand information out there.

Phil

Re:Question about your blackberry

[danielrm26]

" I've been thinking about getting one and syching it with OS X. How well have you been finding it works?"

Yes, it seems to be working quite nicely. Alarmed events from iCal don't come over with alarms in the device (unless I'm missing something), but other than that it seems pretty decent.

Not surprised.

[Misch]

Not surprised...

I had a Palm Vx. Most stable piece of hardware I ever owned. But, then it got stolen from me at my workplace. (Bastards). I replaced it with a Palm Zire 71. Nice color screen. Software was slightly unstable. Sometimes it would freeze up while doing something (usually while playing a game).

I just replaced it with a Tungsten T5. The software is total crap. It fried its own memos database during a hotsync. Luckily I had a backup of that... and, oh yeah... Palm dropping the Universal Connector platform... real smart idea there.

Idiots. I'm not surprised.

Re:dice roller?

[toddbert]

Well, if you're using a Palm device there is a decent dice roller called Gamer's Dice Roller. Can't remember where I downloaded it from, but the help screen says...

http://palm.dahm.com/

Hope this helps!

Declining Quality?

[cyranoVR]

Unfortunately, it seems that PalmOne's current strategy isn't to innovate, but to make crappy devices that need to be replaced after 9-12 months.

I bought my Tungsten | E less than a year ago (April 2004). After less than three months, the chrome had completely chipped off the "down" button, last week its stereo jack stopped working, and the battery is on its way to dying.

I went to the Palm website to see about at least getting my TE's stereo jack fixed. Turns out the warranty only spans 90 days(!), after which repairs cost [palmone.com] a $125 flat-fee(!!). Coincidence that this is almost as much as some new Palm handhelds? The support section of their website offers the following "advice:" [palmone.com]

palmOne does not provide replacements for lost or out-of-warranty parts and accessories. If the warranty has expired for your accessory, we recommend you purchase a new one (palmOne Store [palmone.com]).

Huh? Why would I spend $499 on a "new one" when I can easily obtain spare parts from a third party? [gethightech.com]. I smell the work of a MBA.

(I ended up opening up the Tungsten myself and soldering the headphone jack connections back into place. There was barely any solder on them to begin with. Hmmmmm....)

Now don't get me wrong, I like my TE and I use it a lot. It's just too bad that Palm designed a device that isn't meant to be used that much!

For $200 + shipping, you'd think they could give me something a little more sturdy.

PDAs down, smart phones up

[jfanning]

It all depends where you are looking.

If you look at the smart phone sales figures they are skyrocketing, only stand-alone PDA unit sales are dropping.

The Register [theregister.co.uk] has an article that counts both sales figures together and has a nice table of figures at the end. Nokia alone shipped 4,949,5590 units with PDA functionality in Q4 2004.

Re:There can be only one...

[Doc Ruby]

You selectively quoted the poster, and changed the sense of their post. They don't just lose the novelty of a new toy, they don't want to carry multiple devices:

"That for me equates to my Blackberry, which I am now syncing with my OS X machine (I refuse to be a M** person)."

The point is that, faced with carrying two devices, one of which (a phone) they want to carry everywhere, they choose that one, and drop the other. Smartphones are neat gadgets, with all the PDA functions that don't quite justify carrying them everywhere for many people. But their phone puts them over the threshold of just a gadget, into an essential tool for lots of people.

Re:There can be only one...

[batemanm]

Build in a damn phone already.

Done [palmone.com].

Cell Phone Sales

[Aeron65432]

Cell phone sales have risen 35%, and Nokia leads with 46 million cellphones sold in the 2nd quarter alone. That means Nokia sells approximately 185million cell phones a year, and thats only one company. Just mind boggling.

http://news.com.com/Cell%20phone%20sales%20keep%20 booming/2100-1016_3-5345047.html [com.com]

Re:About "converged" devices....

[javatips]

The Versa Mail application included with Palm One devices is able sync your mail when you do a hotsync. The computer will d/l e-mail from an IMAP or POP3 account and store it on the PDA. It will also send e-mail your wrote on the PDA via a SMTP server.

And there is always the infrared port which can be use to connect to a cell phone.

Re:About "converged" devices....

[gotem]

for storing passwords, pins, etc. I really recomend Keyring (http://gnukeyring.sf.net/)