PDA market to grow to $8.2b by 2006, iSuppli forecasts - The Circuit

Electronic News, April 1, 2002

THE MARKET FOR PERSONAL digital assistants (PDAs) and other handheld computers underwent tremendous growth in 2001, according to iSuppli Corp., with sales soaring 72 percent year-over-year to $3 billion.

About 12.1 million units were shipped in 2001, the El Segundo, Calif.-based market research company said. iSuppli is predicting PDA shipments will reach more than 50 million units by 2006, with revenues of $8.2 billion.

"This level of growth is typical for a young market," said Matthew Wilkins, senior analyst and author of iSuppli's PDA market report. "We can expect to see growth of about 55 percent in 2002, but looking further out, the growth rate will stabilize at about 30 percent annually, as the market begins to mature."

Santa Clara, Calif.'s Palm Inc. owns the dominant share of the market, with about 41 percent, iSuppli said. As Palm and other PDA manufacturers make the transition into adding integrated wireless functionality to their offerings, several changes in technology infrastructure are expected, iSuppli said.

For example, the most unilateral change to this market will be the adoption of the ARM microprocessor architecture, which is currently found in 26 percent of PDAs on the market, iSuppli said. However, this should change because Palm and Microsoft Corp. offer ARM-only operating systems; and all future alternatives for PDA microprocessors will be ARM-based.

According to iSuppli, the Palm OS also dominates the market for PDA operating systems, with 60 percent of the market in 2001. Its closest competitor was Microsoft, which held 30 percent of the market with its Windows CE operating system.