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Worldwide Handheld Devices Market Sees Slight Quarterly Growth, Slight Year-Over-Year Decline, Says IDC
July 28, 2004 |Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
Framingham, Mass. — The worldwide market for handheld devices experienced a slight sequential gain in the second quarter of 2004, but despite strong shipments from top five vendors palmOne and Medion, was unable to post a year-over-year increase, according to IDC's Worldwide Handheld Qview.
Device shipments increased 3.2 percent sequentially and dropped 2.2 percent year-over-year in 2Q04 to 2.2 million units.
The most significant development during the quarter was Sony's announcement that, with the exception of Japan, it would be withdrawing from the handheld device market. The decision, prompted by Sony's difficulties gaining share in the mature handheld device market, resulted in top vendor palmOne emerging as the only major Palm OS-powered vendor in the market. While it remains unclear as to what degree Sony's departure aided palmOne's increase in shipments during the quarter, the burden is clearly on palmOne to pick up Sony's loyal user base during the second half of the year, or to lose them to the competition.
Vendor Highlights:
- palmOne — Although palmOne's shipments increased only 0.6 percent year-over-year, the vendor was able to achieve sequential growth of 14.1 percent and a resulting market share gain of 4 percent during the second quarter of 2004. palmOne's challenge in the second half of 2004 will be to maintain its recent momentum while taking advantage of the imminent reality of becoming the only major Palm OS vendor in the handheld market.
- Hewlett-Packard — Despite an 8.2 percent sequential drop in shipments in the second quarter and a corresponding drop in market share of 3 to 24.1 percent, HP was able to increase shipments 39.2 percent year-over-year. HP remains well-positioned for the future and expects to begin shipping a range of new handhelds in the third quarter of the year.
- Sony — Sony's position in the handheld market slipped 1.6 percent to a market share of 7.8 percent on a shipment decline of 14.6 percent sequentially and 33.2 percent year-over-year. Although certain regions continued to experience strong shipments of handheld devices, it will be difficult for Sony to maintain the No. 3 spot as Dell pushes its new device and news of Sony's pending departure from the handheld market continues to impact the market.
- Dell — Year-over-year shipment growth of 4.6 percent was not enough to save Dell from a 7.8 percent sequential drop, resulting in a slight loss of 0.8 percent in market share. However, Dell's newest flagship handheld, the X30, is expected to continue to build momentum in the next quarter and help the company improve its market standing.
- Medion — After dropping shipments significantly in the first quarter of the year, relative newcomer Medion recaptured the fifth spot from Toshiba with a market-leading, year-over-year growth rate of 67.3 percent.