Struggling hand-held market sees poor Q1
Sales of hand-held devices have dropped by more than 40 per cent from last year
The worldwide hand-held device market is in the doldrums after experiencing its 13th consecutive quarter of year-on-year decline as users continue to transition towards converged mobile devices.
According to IDC’s latest Worldwide Hand-held QView just over 900,000 hand-held devices were shipped in the first quarter of 2007, which is 36.3 per cent less than the previous quarter and 40.6 per cent less than the same quarter a year ago. The decrease in shipments coincided with the news that Dell was leaving the hand-held space.
Ramon Llamas, research analyst with IDC’s mobile device technology and trends team, told CRN: “Dell’s exit from the hand-held device market underscores the market’s decline. The features found on a hand-held device are not exclusive to hand-held devices. Personal information management, the key feature that once distinguished hand-helds, can now be found commonly on converged mobile devices.
“The growing popularity of converged mobile devices combined with declining prices for laptop computers have put tremendous pressure on the hand-held market.”
David Gould, commercial director at PC World Business, said: “Unconnected devices, such as PDAs, that have no voice capability, are unattractive, stand-alone devices. People want to buy something they can get more functionality from.”