Pocket PC Sales Equaled Palm OS Sales During the First Quarter

[Ed Hardy]

The battle for the handheld operating system market has heated up as PalmSource and Microsoft were in a virtual tie in shipments in the first quarter of 2004.

Read http://www.brighthand.com/article/PP...During_Q1_2004

[neuron]

Considering PalmOne sold 3 million Zire(zire and zire71) within 18 month, I am wondering how many Tungsten they have sold so far?

Since Palmone still has 30% market share, does anyone know how much is zire and how much is tungsten? thanks

[imported_CSimpson]

I'd like to know how many units Tapwave has sold. Does anyone know if the Gartner research measures them?

[whydidnt]

I'm a little confused by what's written in this article -

First I read: "This caused the Palm OS market share to slip to 40.7 percent, while Pocket PC's market share increased to 40.2 percent."

Then I read: "Nevertheless, palmOne is still the leading handheld company by a good margin."

Which is it - are they almost even in market share, or is Palm still the leading handheld company? I personally don't think 0.5% is a huge margin, but maybe I'm missing something.

[ktdan1]

Since we have the units sold, do we have the $ sold. Since the there is a big disparity between device pricing it might be an interesting value to calculate.

[rob]

Originally posted by whydidnt
I'm a little confused by what's written in this article -

First I read: "This caused the Palm OS market share to slip to 40.7 percent, while Pocket PC's market share increased to 40.2 percent."

Then I read: "Nevertheless, palmOne is still the leading handheld company by a good margin."

Which is it - are they almost even in market share, or is Palm still the leading handheld company? I personally don't think 0.5% is a huge margin, but maybe I'm missing something.

Palm OS systems as a whole (Zires, Tungstens, Sonys) v. PPC systems (HP, Toshiba, Dell, etc.). Those numbers are even.

Individual sales, PalmOne has a larger margin.
PalmOne: 30.5%
HP: 21.1%

[imported_orol]

palm or palmsource are doing one fatal mistake. they announced palm os6 in december and new handhelds are about to arrive in september. why they didn't do it like microsoft ?

hiding details of new version of OS as much as it gets. even I'm tired of waiting for new palm os powered PDA

I've UX50 which is still the best PDA on the market but motorola MPx hp 6300, nokia 9500 are here by the time "firtst" palm os6 PDAs hit the street

so palmOne/palmsource/sony. you better hurry up otherwise this time you will definitely be doomed

[cbowers]

Or so the paraphrase goes.

Yet again we have the fruits of no real competition to PalmOne to get their rears back in gear.

PalmOS sales would be higher if bunches of us weren't waiting for someone, *anyone* to put out some real comparable hardware.

It used to be we'd content ourselves with reduced hardware features compared to PocketPC because the price was cheaper. Those days are gone.

My sense is you have lots of buyers who would ordinarily be scooping up Tungsten class devices, but are holding back.

PalmOne has nothing to compare squarely at the moment, we're loathe to buy pocketpc's sound hardware because of it's OS, and while options like the Treo 600 are good, it's just not quite good enough (maybe if the treo 610 rumors bear out it'll be different).

Broken record time but Palmsource needs to get the likes of HP, Toshiba, Fujitsu into the PalmOS market. This propping up of PalmOne is getting tedious, and now it's hitting the bottom line of the platform.

Posted as one who lives with his Tungsten C and it's shortcomings, but who still wishes his HandEra 330 had an Arm processor and 64MB's of RAM. RIP HandEra.

[Timothy Rapson]

Originally posted by cbowers

PalmOS sales would be higher if bunches of us weren't waiting for someone, *anyone* to put out some real comparable hardware.

It used to be we'd content ourselves with reduced hardware features compared to PocketPC because the price was cheaper. Those days are gone..

I am so with you one this. I just bought a Zire 71 for $118 closeout. PalmOne surely made no money on this sale. I would love to have a Zire 72 with virtual grafitti for $250 or so. I would even pay $300. But, with a small square screen that is no better than a 3 year old Clie? No sale.

Not when ViewSonics are going for $150, Dell Axims for $180, and even a 64 MB removable battery HP 1935 for less (sometimes much less) than $200. Hardwarewise PalmOne has the volume that should allow them to outprice the PPCs every time. But, feature for feature, they just don't beat the PPCs on price.

[polarbearucla]

I'm pretty sure that these numbers dont incude the Treo 600 and other such smart phones (not sure if it was in Brighthand's article, or another sites article) but atleast thats what i remember. That being said, the Treo 600 is only one device, and it will be interesting to see whethere it becomes Palm's building block into the market, like the III series was into the PIM market. However, i think the treo is going to face some stiff competition very soon from the likes of the MPX and the h6300. Obviously, as these numbers demonstrate, just running the PALM OS isn't a huge selling advantage as it used to be, but rather maybe a detraction since Windows Mobile has developed quite nicely and everyone wants a common platform with the ubiquitous Windows. So thus Palm is going to have to rely on its hardware, and with so many hardware manufactures out there making phones/ pdas with either OS, i doubt one model will model will have an advantage for long. Thats my opinion.