PDA Sales Fall for Third Year in Row 312
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.
There can be only one... (Score:5, Interesting)
I am torn between being geeky and liking tons of devices, but also moving toward simplification as a central theme in my life. Simplication, in the world of gadgets, unfortunately means using a single, do-it-all device. That for me equates to my Blackberry, which I am now syncing with my OS X machine (I refuse to be a M** person).
Anyway, that's the trend I think -- single devices doing everything. Few people want to lug around multiple contraptions.
Question about your blackberry (Score:2)
BTW. nice highlander reference.
OSX (Score:2, Informative)
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 sin
Re:Question about your blackberry (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Question about your blackberry (Score:2)
Re:There can be only one... (Score:5, Informative)
Note that smartphone sales [mobilizedsoftware.com] are on the rise. Standalone PDAs are suffering, but the integrated devices are taking off.
EricJ2ME articles and stuff [ericgiguere.com]
Re:There can be only one... (Score:2)
Re:There can be only one... (Score:2)
Re:There can be only one... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have found this with every variation on organizers, day-planners, scheduling software, etc. They're fun to look at and play with for a few days, and you try to convince yourself this time you'll actually use it.
The reality is, some people (like me) just don't use that kind of organizing tool and it's just a gadget. I know a lot of people who don't/won't use any such critter. I figure except for a small fraction of people, most people simply do not need this kind of thing.
Maybe they've already sold them to everyone who cares.
Re:There can be only one... (Score:2)
I like PDAs but not enough to carry one just for the organizer part. I now do carry one because I have a Tungsten that plays MP3s and RAs, and has a good enough screen that I can read books and view photos on it. Just the PDA functions weren't
Re:There can be only one... (Score:2, Informative)
"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 carry
Re:There can be only one... (Score:2)
However, there's been nothing in the past few years in the PDA world that's offered any features (except size) that my second iPaq didn't have (or at least any that I would use). Instead, my last 2 organisers have both been phones (the Nokia 3650, and n
Re:There can be only one... (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe you just never found your killer app. I did.
The PDA for me has worked the best as a raw text entry device. I used it in any university and extension courses where there is a huge amount of text or material that doesn't involve a lot of math or derivations or drawing (like History, Economics, Marketing. I even used it in my Intro to Databases course). Occasional diagrams can be put on a paper notepad, but try doing text search through 100 pages of notes. Or cleaning up and reorganizing notes -- talk about time consuming and clunky.
Plain text editing without all the formating crap is where its at on PDAs. Unfortunately, this required an external keyboard, something others didn't dish out for. Data entry techniques on the PDAs without a keyboard are almost impossible, and built in keyboards like the zaurus are almost useless.
Contrast this with taking a notebook computer to class. In university, my experience has been that usually the people using them are just fiddling with fonts, or colors or text layout... Anything but actually taking notes. It seems to be more a toy than an actual tool -- something to show off. But with my pda, I had no fonts or text layout to play around with: I could just take notes. And its tiny compared to a notebook computer, 10% of the cost and liability, the battery lasts weeks (besides being easy to replace at 2 AAA batteries) and it is light and small.
Re:There can be only one... (Score:5, Insightful)
It works surprisingly well -- I get highly-formatted text, including greek and cyrillic characters as needed. I can reproduce complex drawings, including simple gray-scale shading. In shorthand mode, I can capture output in near real time, and in high-quality output mode other students can generally read my notes. Pretty amazing things, these pencils.
I watched a fellow student using both thumbs to frantically poke tic-tac sized buttons on his PDA's integrated keyboard, and offered him a piece of paper and a spare pencil. "No way", he said, "this is a $500 PDA!". Sigh.
Re:There can be only one... (Score:2, Insightful)
Simplicity counterpoint (Score:5, Insightful)
Simplication, in the world of gadgets, unfortunately means using a single, do-it-all device.
That will simplify one's cartage/storage needs - using one device is pretty straightforward, after all - but can very easily complicate other aspects.
I carry a laptop, a PDA (Clie), and a mobile phone. I don't need all of them all the time, so I carry what is necessary. However, if one item goes south I will still have the other two. If the all-in-one device breaks it becomes an all-are-gone. I find this unacceptable - YMMV.
Small all-in-one devices also frequently suffer from substandard input options and user interfaces. A fair compromise might be a PDA/phone device with an optional full-size (e.g. folding) keyboard, but that still leaves the user with the risk of losing all functionality with one mishap.
Re:There can be only one... (Score:2, Insightful)
Build in a damn phone already.
Re:There can be only one... (Score:3, Informative)
Done [palmone.com].
Re:There can be only one... (Score:2)
Re:There can be only one... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:There can be only one... (Score:2)
Re:There can be only one... (Score:2)
Yes but (Score:5, Insightful)
Logical (Score:2, Interesting)
So, I swapped it for a read-only PDA : An iPod, that is.
I think people now either get a smartphone or an iPod for such needs.
Re:Logical (Score:2)
Re:Logical (Score:2)
you had a 'need' to edit LARGE excel spreadsheets.. so you switched to a music player with some note-reading functionality.
more to note would be that in most countries where phones commonly come through the carrier, you'll get price-cuts on the phone (that you of course pay with your subscription ultimately but that's another thing)- you can't get them on the pda.. so the pda seems more expensive anyhow(good pda's are pretty expensive).
No Blackberrys? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the line between pda/cell phone is starting to blur....Might as well have counted the Blackberry....Hell, you can do most of what you need to on a PDA on a cell phone these days. And they come free/relatively cheap with new service
thewldisntenuff
Treos not counted either (Score:3, Insightful)
i have not carried my Palm in a few years, but if i was still willing to deal with the bulk of it i would have gotten a Treo already. my cell phone is not all that smart, but it keeps more contact info than just phone number, schedule, memo pad (to do list, shopping lists) and some other stupid things. i miss the Palm OS and the bon
Re:No Blackberrys? (Score:2)
traditional pda sales are down.
Re:No Blackberrys? (Score:2)
hardly insightful, really. Adding a load of sales of a DIFFERENT class of device, is not a sensible way to pull up numbers.
Sales of steam trains are falling; could adding in sales of cars pull the numbers up?
Re:No Blackberrys? (Score:2)
Re:No Blackberrys? (Score:2)
Blackberries have some PDA functionality, but they do much more. Web browsing (although it's slow) and e-mail are great features that you can't get with a typical 'unconnected' PDA.
Just an observation (Score:4, Insightful)
Another thought is that modern mobile phones have more akin with PDAs (albiet in a different format package) than they do with older generation phones and that the 'phone' feature was the killer applications.
my PDA is still better but... (Score:2)
All around it's better.
butcomplete lack of quality products on the market.
If a company came out with a decent priced good PDA... it would be a whole new market. Unfortunately, there are none.
[dream]I'm still hoping Apple will eventualy step up with a PDA, Phone, Mp3 player deal that will knock everyone'
Re:my PDA is still better but... (Score:2)
...I've got nothing. But anyway, if you have a PDA, you don't need extra functionality to make it an MP3 player. Just a good, readily available player, plenty of memory, and good battery life.
It's not just cell phones (Score:5, Interesting)
Might not be good for people who constantly have to write stuff down, but for me it does what I need to do, oh yeah and plays music.
Re:It's not just cell phones (Score:2)
J.
I can see why (Score:3, Funny)
dice roller? (Score:2)
wtf?
just download or code a j2me, c++, python, opl or vb program to do it..
Re:dice roller? (Score:2, Informative)
http://palm.dahm.com/
Hope this helps!
My cell phone is better than yours... (Score:2, Funny)
Sure, but can you use it like a CB radio [pokia.com] (DJ Convoy)? Is it Shatner-compliant [ebay.com]?
Ebooks (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ebooks (Score:2)
because (Score:5, Interesting)
For every generation of the PDA the operating systems have gotten much slower, bloated, hiding necessary functions, doing the usual MS oversimplification of the interface (hiding file extensions, not actually closing the apps etc).
Add more crashes, data loss and an abysmal battery duration and I'd say it's no wonder why the PDA sales drop, especially with phones getting more and more PDA functionality.
PDAs never got their killer application, which could have been a few of: phone capability, superior data input method compared to phones, instant messaging, mail, cheaper packet based data transfer or porn.
I can only see one way PDAs can go, and that is to be smaller, have a longer battery duration and have phone and instant messaging support and by that definitely Edge/GPRS/UMTS or other 3G telephony and data transfer capability, in effect becoming a lot of things at once.
The only way this can be achieved is with a total rewrite or replacement of PocketPC/WindowsCE
Re:because (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called "PalmOS". PalmSource has announced a future version will be based on Linux, which is exciting.
Now if someone will just build some compelling hardware... :-)
Wearable devices are a dark horse in all this also, and might make a better base for converged comm/computer functionality (since you can comfortably carry bigger batteries that way).
Re:because (Score:2)
Re:because (Score:2)
This is not always a bad thing. OS X apps don't exit when they have no open documents, they stay in memory until you next click on them and then respond instantly. The first machine I had that did this was a Psion Series 3 (remember them? Great machines). Closing a document would sometimes drop you out of the application, but the app would still be memory resident unless explicitly killed. The machine only had 256K of RAM (I remember paying £30 for a 128K flash disk
Re:because (Score:2)
Re:because (Score:2)
"that is to be smaller"
You realy want an even tinier screen?!? PDA's these days are pretty much teh right size to still be functional... If you'd look at smartphones you'd see their are generally two types with Palm opting for a inbetween unit (Treo 600 & 6
Re:because (Score:2)
PDAs need to be smaller if they want to compete with smartphones.
OR
PDAs need to be a LOT better if they are to retain their current sizes with their nice screens etc.
They simply are not good enough, and that is why the sales drop.
Re:because (Score:2)
I've been writing software for Windows CE devices full-time since 1996 (Windows CE 1.0). I can tell you beyond any doubt that beyond a few specific devices (DELL Axim X5 Basic comes to mind) performance has improved steadily across the board. CE 3.0 brought a new kernel that was vastly superior to the versions before it. The RAM is constantly increasing, the displays are now VGA resoluti
Re:because (Score:2)
For example, I say that they need to be smaller - if they want to compete with smartphones, or be more feature-rich and have a longer battery life when it comes to communication possibilities, if they are to stand their ground in their current configuration.
I th
Re:because (Score:2)
But back to the original OT question, why WINCE?
PDA friendly websites (Score:2)
Re:PDA friendly websites (Score:4, Interesting)
Interestingly enough, this is how Opera makes most of it's money. While their PC browser is excellent, (IMHO), it's the ability to render sites on small screen's that's making the company money.
Tablet PC (Score:2)
It's also a hell of a lot easier to work with email and web tasks than on a little 4" 640x480 (at best) display.
Re:Tablet PC (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Impresses the hell out of potential clients, most of whom have not seen anything like it.
2. Makes it very easy for a designer to mark up a design during a client meeting.
3. Swivel screen is convenient when you're meeting with others and need to show them what's going on.
4. We carry our laptops everywhere anyway... no need for a PDA, especially when it can't match up on features and usability.
Now I want one.
Newton - PalmPilot - iPod (Score:3, Insightful)
When the PalmPilot came out I found that it could do 90% of what I could do on my Newton in a smaller package. I was using Grafiti on my Newton anyway, so it didn't make sense to keep using it.
Then I stopped taking notes on the Palm and just used it for calendar and contacts. One more thing to remember to take with me.
Now I can sync my (iCal) calendars and my address book to my iPod. I take that little white gem with me pretty much everywhere anyway, and it's doing 80-90% of what my PalmPilot did. And it "just works" on my Mac OS X box.
So it isn't a surprise that this is happening: few people really need to read and write email on the Blackberry. Can you not be disconnected for a few minutes a day?
Re:Newton - PalmPilot - iPod (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Newton - PalmPilot - iPod (Score:3, Interesting)
Interestingly enough, you just indicated that your iPod only does 72-81% of what your Newton did...
Yup, which means I have pretty modest needs. And my Newton didn't carry around 36G of music either.
Re:Newton - PalmPilot - iPod (Score:2)
How do you enter phone numbers or new calendar items on your iPod without hooking it up to a laptop? Is there another interface built into it to type stuff in?
I don't. For my usage I rarely if ever find myself needing to do this. Either I'm just adding someones business card, which I can just do as easily at my desk, or an appointment card, which I can also do at my desk.
Smartphones (Score:2)
Not surprised. (Score:3, Informative)
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.
what's in a name (Score:2)
On the other hand, 'people' think PDAs are for geeks, so a PDA with a built in phone stays on the shelves, even if it were identical to the phone with the built in PDA.
On most high end phones now, the actual phone probably represents less than a third of the functionality, but it's still called a phone. That's amrketing.
If it stores my
About "converged" devices.... (Score:5, Interesting)
-
A way for me to keep a material/hardware reference commonly used in my industry right on hand via SD card (FAA document MMPDS-01 in case your wondering).
-
A "lightweight" Octave (LyME) for more complex calculations (I use NeoCal otherwise).
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An organizer that's independant of my office scheduler so I can integrate my personal and work schedules without storing personal information on my office computer.
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A means to check my home e-mail without storing personal data on my work machine. (although I could use the web).
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A way to securely store my ever increasing number of passwords, pin #'s, etc. (yes, my handheld is password protected).
-
So, for me, it works out. I thought about getting a converged phone/PDA, but I take my phone places I'd never take my PDA. A phone can be replaced, the data I have stored on my PDA would be a much more severe loss.
-
-
Anyway, my 2 cents.
Re:About "converged" devices.... (Score:3, Informative)
And there is always the infrared port which can be use to connect to a cell phone.
PDAs aren't upgraded as often as cell phones (Score:2)
My cell phone goes almost everywhere with me. It is tiny and light and has all important contacts. But it isn't a complete replacement for my PDA.
The problem is that I don't have any need to replace my PDA. I have a 5 year old Handspring Visor that still does everything I want it to do. The only really important things I use it for are playing chess (lets see a really good program for a cell phone), storing passwords and
Newton (Score:2)
Nevvton Communiity (Score:3, Funny)
It's 6ood xo see that somehbv4 else is vsing a Nevvton t0 make Slabbbot entries #
Re:Nevvton Communiity (Score:2)
yow think Yom awe so funny @
4 have a Newtonad i + works j USt fine x OK? Much better rm MA Graffxti c -wok .
Wireless offices play a part, as well. (Score:3, Interesting)
No surprise (Score:3, Insightful)
Therefore it isn't much of a surprise than standalone PDA's are dying when my current pda/phone combo [typepad.com] is nearly the same size as a Nokia 7610 [nokia.com] and comes with a decent input method (which always was the killer issue with using a standard phone pad to enter details), sends and receieves phone calls/sms/mms and works as a PocketPC with a large base of useful applications. A Nokia simply doesn't cut it and the SonyEricsson P9xx is only discounted because it's syncing with Outlook isn't particulary great (especially with the categorisation of tasks and notes).
A friend of mine is selling his iPaq after getting a Blackberry from work. Sure it doesn't have a NES emulator, PocketScumm and a few other of the niceties - but it does everything he needs.
I'm going to really hate having to give this back.
Declining Quality? (Score:5, Informative)
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] 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.
Mine works as intended, no need for new one. (Score:2)
Re:Mine works as intended, no need for new one. (Score:2)
Your subject sums it up, really.
A PDA works, does its job, and tends to last a while. People tend not to get a new one until the old one packs in, starts to fail, or simply lacks required features.
You also tend to have to pay full unit price in most cases.
Cellphones tend to get replaced often. Most people tend to either upgrade or replace their phones after a year or two. Personally I'm on my fourth handset since 1999 but only just (this week) bought my second PDA since 2001. (One of the buttons on my
Re:Mine works as intended, no need for new one. (Score:2)
Now I have a Tungsten T3 provided for me by work. It has a nice big color screen, so I have stored some pics of my fiancée on it, and a few MP3's on the SD card I bought. Even though these features are nice, they still wouldn't be enough to make me want to upgrade--especially for the price. Who wants to pay $300-$400 for a d
PDAs down, smart phones up (Score:2, Informative)
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.
No innovation (Score:3, Interesting)
But where is the innovation? I want a few-gigas-hardrive (those I hear from toshiba might do the trick...), a nice-to-have-640x480-screen, decent battery, GSM/GPRS or UMTS, and even an integrated projector to do some presentations... I want a real personal assistant that makes me use it, or I will (again) leave my PDA at home and just bring along my cellular.
It seems the PDAs that come out simply don't have anything really new, besides an extra Mhz from a new Intel processor.
Heh (Score:2)
TLAs are far too overloaded already, but bad marketing decisions keep pushing more meanings on them.
IDC marketing frame (Score:3, Insightful)
Am I the only one (Score:2)
Listen to Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
A couple years back (and even today!) people whined about how Apple should make a PDA -- bring back the Newton, or whatever. Steve Jobs repeatedly said Apple isn't interested in that market; now we see why.
Sam
I had a Palm Pilot (Score:2)
But I just found myself going to paper more often. I think the main problem was the need to sometimes sketch a small picture of something along with some text, and there was no easy way
They're mature, "perfected." Why would sales grow? (Score:2)
This just in: sales of pencils, shoelaces, and clothespins are not growing, either.
Despite my warnings, my wife bought a $30 battery-powered PDA with no PC connectivity about five years ago. She loved it. It did everything she needed. T
Vx, P800, Qtek S100 (Score:2, Interesting)
Cell Phone Sales (Score:2, Informative)
http://news.com.com/Cell%20phone%20sales%20keep%2
A proper keyboard. (Score:2)
I can't get the hang of "graffiti" and I don't like typing by stabbing at a tiny on-screen keyboard with a stick. These days, I only use my Palm T3 for Acid-Solitaire, the alarm clock and playing MP3 files.
PDA == Long term investment (Score:4, Insightful)
So how is it surprising that sales have dropped now that 99% of those people have their PDAs?
Future Fone (Score:2)
Of course it would really, really help if Verizon would 'open' the phone, so it wasn't a fee to play any games on it. C'mon, at least my old Nokia had MasterMind, Concentration and Snakes!
But what would I really want? I've been debating to myself recently whether I'd want a 'does everything' box, or a Bluetooth (or its successor)-controlled personal netw
Games, etc. (Score:2)
Now, if there was some way to combine the Palm OS with a Gameboy Advance or Nintendo DS, you'd really have something!
out: PDAs --- in: smartphones (Score:3, Interesting)
Smartphones will continue to get better and PDAs, like boomboxes and those camcorders you used to attach to a VCR, will be another personal electronics form-factor that just won't make much sense in a few years.
A pen and a pad of paper! (Score:2)
I saved my pennies and bought a Message Pad 2000 when it came out. Then I upgraded it to the 2100 model. It was the best PDA ever despite it's unweildy size. If you wear cargo pants everywhere it might be considered a "pocket" computer.
So
You are being sold a bill of goods (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean how many of you have a cheap candy bar or flip phone that has an obscure data port connector in the bottom that no one can describe to you what it does or sell you a cable of any kind that will connect to it? Let alone show you some software that will at least sync to a Palm desktop or something quick and dirty?
I bet the numbers are huge.
On the other hand I think that people are discovering that PDAs are for the most part unusable devices on their own. Everyone has struggled for years with Graffiti, T9, Fitaly and all the others. Data entry just sucks. And when you're done entering data, then what? Are you really going to trade your stock portfolio i real time with one? Are you really going to bust out that Powerpoint presentation?
Nah, you're going to browse the sports pages, the weather report, CNN and that's about it besides some games.
So PDS sales are decreasing because PDA function really hasn't increased in 5 years. We're still limited in the same ways doing the same halfassed things we were doing 5 years ago.
I'll tell you what I use my PDA for: Avantgo, the address book, a DB of passwords and special calendars I need. Everything else is a waste of time.
But - if phone companies could provide this level of functionality I'd dump my PDA in a second. Even with the smaller screen and reduced battery life.
Usability (Score:3, Interesting)
Good Form Factor, bad timing (Score:3, Interesting)
My idea was that a PDA was a portable interface to a larger, networked computing environment, not just a portable hand held version of your desktop. You use your PDA as a portable means to access applications and data residing on the network with a little compute power in you hand for other things.
The reality is, unfortunately, this just doesn't exist. The network wasn't there and when it was, a PDA couldn't connect to it - it has only been recently that you could get 802.11x connectivity for you Palm. WinCE\WindMobile devices like the iPAQ had them but they were difficult to configure (type a 28 character WEP key in by hand with a stylus?!?!). And once you got them configured, what to use them for except surfing the net.
And then there are the other technical issues. If I leave my iPAQ in my bag overnight or over a weekend and the battery is sucked dry, it is the equivelent of a soft-reset. I loose many of my installed programs and data as the device resets to factory settings. They aren't easily upgradable for the expense of buying one. The data storage and capabilities of some of the OS are lacking. I would love to run full JVM (or at least a stripped down version that is customizable) on a PDA.
Just imaging an environment where your PDA can run some fairly powerful programs, can easily connect, or be configured to connect, to a network. It can display highspeed graphics, dynamically download code (via say Jini) and can connect to devices and service with say jxta - one minute it can be your remote control for the TV\DVD\Stereo, the next your VOIP soft phone, the next you are using an application to enter data at work. This PDA can be easily upgraded and wounldn't lose data unless you format the storage device.
Until the day comes when all of this is available in a consumer device rather than a geek-hacked, one-off experiment (cuz I know ALL of the above can be done with the right tools, apis and a soldering iron), PDAs will never live up to thier promise.
Re:Its the russians (Score:2, Funny)
It might also be because of top politicians' consumption of that wonderful Ukrainian delicacy: dioxin-and-borscht soup.
Re:Not a suprise... (Score:2)
Try this Yahoo Group... (Score:2)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vx4400support/
Good luck,
Re:What I need... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What I need... (Score:2)