1 Million Handhelds Shipped in EMEA, Q4-03
The year ended on a high for most mobile device vendors in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) according to the research from analyst firm Canalys. Two million smartphones and one million handhelds shipped in the region during the fourth quarter 2003.
"Handhelds have found a new lease of life with the arrival of competitively priced GPS navigation bundles," said Canalys senior analyst and director Chris Jones. "In some countries, Germany being a prime example, major retailers are now insisting on navigation solutions in preference to standalone handhelds, and the leading vendors are taking advantage of this. Vendors without navigation bundles will find it harder to get shelf space - Palm and Sony have some catching up to do in this area. It will become more and more difficult to sell such devices purely on the basis of personal information management. Low end handhelds are competing with smart phones offering a similar level of functionality; high end models must offer other benefits to justify their higher price points."
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RE: how much to they pay these analysts?
Let me further add that smartphones are damned expensive - they are only considerably cheaper then their PDA conterparts when offered with a plan - but then its a matter of them being subsidized by the telcos, who know they'll get it back from you in the long run. I guess that his opinion makes sense depending on whether or not you agree with his definition of 'similar level of functionality' - for me it doesn't.
RE: how much to they pay these analysts?
But that's the whole point of a smart phone. Only the geek's and must-haves pay the full price. Everyone else gets the equivalent of a low-end PDA plus a mobile at a much lower price. Hence the commment that the low end PDAs will suffer. These generally are made by Palm and Sony. The PPC models are generally at the high end of the price scale.
Jejoma
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how much to they pay these analysts?
Strange that they'd single out Palm OS - are there any PPC devices that have GPS built-in? The only PDA with GPS built in IS a Palm OS device. WTF? I mean - PocketPC is selling bigger in Europe right now (in the PDA market space) - so i'd think this so-called analyst would pick out these devices. As for the comment about PDAs not having enough features to justify the price and differentiate from smartphones - get me a smartphone that runs at 400mhz, has a large hires+ screen BUT it still somehow magically small enough to be a phone(which it cant of course - which is why some people still want PDAs as seperate devices), has SDIO, wireless (BT or wifi), and 64MB of memory and then we'll talk. I agree that these don't justify the price (because i always want cheaper - doesn't everybody?) - but the point is that these devices do offer something that i definately can't get in a smartphone (or i would have bought one already). There will continue to be seperate PDAs - non-smartphone - for as long as people want something that cant be accomadated in a smartphone form factor (many PDAs are moving toward laptop replacement - no smartphone can fit THAT niche the way a T3 does for example). But yeah - he's right about that being where most consumers are putting their money. its just that smartphones represent a new market - one that overlaps BUT does not replace the existing PDA market.