PDA’s Are Alive & Well Thanks to Wireless Email. Windows CE and RIM New Leaders

Despite techno-hype rumblings that smart phones are going to smash the PDA market, research analyists at Gartner reported that PDA’s had their best year-over-year quarter ever: “Worldwide PDA shipments increased 25 percent to 3.4 million in the first quarter of 2005 compared with a year ago — the best first quarter ever for PDA sales. The market was led by 84.3 percent growth in Western European PDA shipments. The U.S. market fell to 39.1 percent of worldwide shipments.”

The bad news for palmOne was that their market share got significantly smaller–shrinking over 26% from 30.5 to 18 percent–although they are still the leader in terms of total PDA units shipped. At the same time, RIM, the makers of Blackberry’s, grew over 75% to blow right by palmOne, increasing from 14.8 to 20.8 percent marketshare. Windows CE-based PDA makers like HP and Dell also saw significant growth making Microsoft the #1 PDA OS, with RIM now 2nd. (See chart).

Note: These stats do NOT include smart phones like the Treo 650 and others.