Sony Exits the PDA Market ? For Now

[hukuju]

As quoted from the

http://www.bargainpda.com/default.asp?newsID=2082

Well I hope that Sony keep on making those LCD screens that the ipaq uses.

It might be a ppc only world soon. Anyway, it seems that MS is trying to be the leader in all the tech markets from xbox...... to ppc.

[martinem]

Sony's Clie Bites the dust...

One down... and the sales keep falling, and falling, and falling

How Long before PDA's are extinct?

[hukuju]

I do not think that PDA would be gone. It would just become the building block for something newer and more all in one type.

Remember that smart phones are pda too. Cheers.

[lord_shar]

Originally posted by martinem
Sony's Clie Bites the dust...

One down... and the sales keep falling, and falling, and falling

How Long before PDA's are extinct?

OMG, did you even read the posted article URL?

[rob]

Though he is gone, the spirit of Craig1959 continues to live on Brighthand.

[martinem]

*From PDA buyers Guide*

After our conference call with Sony, we chatted with Todd Kort at Gartner to get his opinion on Sony's exit from the handheld market. Here were his thoughts:

On Sony:

- Sony had 20% of the Palm OS market in Q1, down from 25% in 2003, not good.
- Sony as a company is struggling financially. They need to concentrate on game consoles and games, and other bread and butter ventures.
- Sony is trying to buy MGM, which involves a great deal of money.
- The Clie's high end multimedia niche didn't pay off.
- They came out with 30 different models and that made for hard work to differentiate models.
- Innovation slacked, with the UX50 being the last innovative model, and that came out 1 year ago.
- Sony Clie models are expensive to produce.
- Sony didn't keep pace with PalmOne restructing and cost reduction.
- PalmOne products are cutting into Sony territory: T3, Zire 71 and 72.
- Only 160,000 PDAs shipped in Japan last year. Todd wonders how worthwhile PDA sales in Japan are since high end feature phones are king there.

On the PDA Market:

The PDA market peaked in 2001. 70% are purchased by individuals now, while that figure was 90% in 2001. Thus the enterprise side is still growing, Microsoft is doing well with the enterprise as is RIM with Blackberry. HP, Dell and RIM are doing well thanks to the enterprise. How do mobile phone sales compare to PDA sales? 600 million mobile phones will sell this year vs. 11 million PDAs.

On Palm OS:

There are 30 million Palm OS users. One problem is that there's no hugely compelling reason to upgrade these days. Color was the last important innovation back in 2001-2002.

Do you think palmOne will end up being a smartphone company? No. Look at the market, palmOne has the low end market to themselves, with Dell encroaching on the entry level $199 X30. Smartphone will be the growth area in a few years but they have a good number of years left in the PDA market.

Todd also stated that he believes that those who'd have purchased a Clie will instead buy a palmOne or perhaps Tapwave Zodiac PDA. He doesn't think that Sony's exit will cause Palm OS users to defect to Pocket PC.
PDABUYERSGUIDE

The handwriting is on the wall.

[lord_shar]

Palm O/S just doesn't match the PPC O/S in terms of multi-tasking, multi-media, interoperability with XP, etc... As a result, incorporating high end multimedia features into the Clie wasn't going to save that doomed venture. Crippled by the memory stick's low capacities, Sony's Clie line was outgunned from the start in the market it was trying to capture, so it simply stood no chance.

As the article also mentioned, Clie's will continue developement in Japan, but Sony will no longer market the new product lines in the US.

Sony Ericsson's Symbian based P900, on the other hand, is doing much better. It is technically a smartphone, but I can assure you that it's also a power-house PDA. The article quoting 600M mobile phone sales vs. 11M pda sales didn't seem to realize that the smartphone IS a PDA with remote communications in a smaller package. So, what percentage of the 600M mobile phones are smart phones?

[martinem]

I can get on board with your conclusions (technically smartphone's) Lord_Shar...

But I still think "traditional" PDA's I.e. No cellular capabilities, will become extinct in the very near future. How much pocket space do you have? Why have two PDA's when one will suffice, in a "power house" fashion as you suggest?

Traditional PDA's are done, the hand writing is on the wall.

[lord_shar]

Originally posted by martinem
I can get on board with your conclusions (technically smartphone's) Lord_Shar...

But I still think "traditional" PDA's I.e. No cellular capabilities, will become extinct in the very near future. How much pocket space do you have? Why have two PDA's when one will suffice, in a "power house" fashion as you suggest?

Traditional PDA's are done, the hand writing is on the wall.

Believe it or not, I wholeheartedly agree

Without something like multimedia, vast storage capacity, and/or seemless mobile connectivity to separate itself from the crowd, yesterday's basic PIM-only PDA won't be competitive enough to sell in today's gadget-oriented markets.

My right pocket is usually occupied by my H5550 w/ sleeve, and it fits comfortably. My SE P900 usually sits in a belt holster or my right jacket pocket (on a cold day). I purchased the P900 about 5 months ago for both mobile phone and internet access for my H5550 via BT. However, the P900's Web Viewer browser worked MUCH faster than Pocket-IE and was able to view SSL sites without issues. Now, I use the P900 as my primary mobile surfing tool -- it is a much cleaner mobile internet solution with the web only 1 screen tap away. I only share the P900 internet connection with the H5550 if I want to view flash sites. Its one design flaw: the 128MB memory stick.

The H5550 is still used as my portable movie player since it has a 4-gig microdrive aboard. My DivX rips usually take 500MB per full lenght movie, so I can easily store 8 full length films (have 5+ now). I purchased this drive in anticipation of the HX4700, my next planned PDA purchase.

[normaldude]

Originally posted by martinem
But I still think "traditional" PDA's I.e. No cellular capabilities, will become extinct in the very near future. How much pocket space do you have? Why have two PDA's when one will suffice, in a "power house" fashion as you suggest?

Traditional PDA's are done, the hand writing is on the wall.

Sadly, that's probably true. I prefer having a separate PDA and cellphone, but it's pretty obvious that the market is leaning towards smartphones.