In a follow-up to our story Gartner Reports Windows CE Surpasses Palm OS PDA Shipments in Q304, NPD released a study that only includes U.S. Retail sales (no corporate sales) that showed that the Palm OS is still the clear leader. Here we point out some interesting facts and things to note when considering these two viewpoints.
NPD Says Palm OS U.S. Retail Lead Gains 10 Points
Palm OS is the market share leader in the U.S. retail handheld market. Based on new data from the NPD Group, the Palm OS US Retail share grew 10 points over the year, mainly on strong sales of the palmOne Tungsten E (See the Tungsten E at palmOne
or the Tungsten E in our Amazon.com Store).
Based on data released by the NPD Group, a retail sales tracking firm, U.S. unit share for Palm Powered handhelds in September 2004 was 76 percent, exceeding that of all of its competitors combined, and gaining roughly 10 points since September 2003.
According to NPD, Palm OS market share was boosted by strong sales of palmOne's handheld products, particularly the Tungsten E, which accounted for 29 percent of all handheld sales in the month. Other Palm OS licensees also contributed, with the Garmin iQue 3600 standing out as the most popular handheld priced over $400 in September. (See the Garmin iQue 3600 in our Amazon.com Store or the Garmin iQue 3200 in our Amazon.com Store).
Retail sales as measured by NPD include sales through retail stores, e-commerce, and distributors. NPD tracks retail sales of handhelds through a combination of domestic retail sales reports and weekly surveys of approximately 35,000 U.S. consumers.
Editors Notes on the NPD Article
The NPD study is real positive for Palm OS, as long as you only look at the U.S. and exclude corporate sales. Even if you want to focus exlusively on the U.S. market, it is not reasonable to exclude corporate sales from the data. This would be like excluding corporate PC sales from a study on Apple's marketshare versus Microsoft on PC's.
However, it is nice to see that Palm continues to lead in U.S. Retail Sales, because this is the area where consumers are free to decide which PDA they chose to purchase rather than corporations that are swayed heavily toward Microsoft's products because they are already familiar with them from a PC standpoint.
Third Quarter 2004 Worldwide PDA Shipments
Now lets take a look at our previous article
Gartner Reports Windows CE Surpasses Palm OS PDA Shipments in Q304. This article paints a completely different picture because it is focusing on Worldwide marketshare instead of U.S. marketshare, it
includes corporate sales, and it also
excludes "smartphones", such as the Treo 6xx. For some reason, however, it considers the iPAQ 6135 a PDA with cellular capabilities. This is just flat-out unfair, since this phone is no different than the capabilities of the Treo 6xx.
Gartner's main statement of interest with these statistics was that smartphones are taking over and PDA's are falling off. In reality, PDA's are getting "smarter" by adding connectivity and voice and phones are adding PDA features. So its a convergence phenomenon that we are observing.
First Quarter 2004 Worldwide Shipments
Now lets go back in time and look at the article
PalmSource and Microsoft Tied for Worldwide PDA Marketshare from May 2004 that covers first quarter numbers. This article adds some interesting info to the mix because it includes PDA's with cellular capabilities. So this is a more valid data set when trying to compare Palm OS vs. Windows CE marketshare.
Unfortunately, it too shows a 20% decline in the Palm OS compared to Q103. At that time, Palm and CE were essentially tied at 40% of the Worldwide market. Notice that it was essentially RIM that came in and took Palm's shipments away. In terms of actual shipments, CE stayed about the same (grew slightly) and Palm dropped by about the number of shipments that RIM had (not quite, but almost).
Conclusion?
There really isn't a conclusion that can be drawn from these three studies. They just aren't comparing anywhere near the same data. If we factor in some outside influences and opinions, we might concur that the following is true:
1. The Palm OS's Worldwide market share is likely declining. Clearly they still hold the lead in the U.S. and they are also quite strong in Europe. Its the rest of the World, then, that is influencing this. We can't give true numbers on this since Gartner chose to remove devices with voice capabilities from their statistics.
2. Smartphone Sales Will Dwarf PDA Sales. This can be based simply on the fact that mobile phone sales dwarf PDA sales. As phones add PDA features and PDA's add phone features, the definition of PDA, phone, and smartphone becomes more difficult, but dedicated PDA sales will never compete with phone sales.
3. The Palm OS likely still leads in the U.S., but Microsoft is a Major Threat. Its hard to back this with statistics since the NPD study doesn't include corporate sales. The article does indicate the Palm OS is a clear winner with consumers, but Microsoft is making significant headway over all.
What we really need is a good study that includes worldwide and U.S. sales along with PDA-only, converged PDA, and true smartphone statistics. A study that went back in time so that we could view trends would be optimal. Until such a study is released, we'll just have to speculate and debate these topics.
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