After IDC reporting handheld device sales declining, I was surprised to find Gartner saying PDA Shipments Grew 32 Percent in Third Quarter of 2006.
It turns out that this is due to how Gartner define a PDA…
"Gartner defines a PDA as a data-centric handheld computer weighing less than one pound that is primarily designed for use with both […]

The latest market statistics show that handheld device sales are still declining. IDC attribute this to lack of new handheld devices. The strange thing is that the previous day IDC published a report claiming this was due to evaporation of consumer demand for bundled handheld GPS solutions. Also, in the same report, converged devices saw growth of 30% year […]

There’s a relatively new Wiki on Mobile Development. It gives a fair indication of the pros and cons of various mobile development platforms and the tools required to develop for them. In practice, you will need a bit more than the Wiki to choose a platform. Deeper technical, marketing and political issues usually pervade a given project […]

The IBM web site contains an article by Mikko Kontio comparing six mobile development technologies. He makes a brave effort of comparing SMS/MMS, MIDP, Symbian, Pocket PC, Smartphone, and Palm OS.
I find that the most important factor, not featured in the article, is whether what you want to do is actually possible under each technology. […]

If you thought Smartphones are taking market share away from PDAs, you might be wrong. According to Gartner, "PDA Shipments of 14.9 Million Units in 2005 Tops Previous Mark Set in 2001"
So what’s a PDA?
"Gartner defines a PDA as a data-centric handheld computer weighing less than one pound that is primarily designed for use […]

More Canalys stats, this time for Q3 World Smartphone sales. Nokia Series 60 continues to surge ahead and Microsoft Windows Mobile  is still not gaining traction. More interesting is Motorola’s massive growth of market share due to its Linux based smart phone in China.

People often ask me what OS platform they should use to implement new mobile projects. Market share is an important consideration.
I came across the following interesting graph when looking at the presentations from the recent Symbian Smartphone show. It shows Canalys estimates of sales of each OS platform by region.

With Palm Inc now licensing Microsoft Windows […]