IDC is saying that, in 2004, Smart Phones will outsell PDAs… specifically, they estimate that 2 smart phones will be sold for every PDA. Not coincidentally, PalmOne announced that they are laying off 100 workers, and their shares are down 14%. There’s a good article about this in USA Today.
This isn’t surprising to me. (Note that they are talking about the smart phone product segment as a whole, not just Microsoft’s variant, which happens to be branded SmartPhone.) I got rid of my PDA when I bought my tablet, but got frustrated by not having my personal information with me in contexts where it didn’t make sense to bring my tablet… I got a Smart Phone recently, and haven’t looked back. I’m usually against integrating things into a single device because it invariably means compromise, but where mobility is key it starts to make sense: why carry a PDA and a cellphone when you can carry one device?
Smart Phones to outsell PDAs
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