Handheld sales faltered in 2005

MARKET RESEARCH firm IDC said that the handheld market showed a year on year decline of 16.7 per cent in 2005, with shipments of 7.5 million units.

That compares with 9.1 million units shipped the year before, said IDC.

Ramon Llamas, research analyst at IDC, said the market had been under "immense pressure" because of converged mobile devices that also act as personal information managers (PIMs).

But despite that, the additional of multimedia, wi-fi and GPS still give handhelds a technological edge over these kind of units.

The top five vendors are Palm, HP, Dell, Acer, and Medion. The "others", however, exceeded shipments of Acer and Medion at 349,067 units in Q4 of last year.

Rank	Vendor	Q4 05	Q4 share	Q4 04	Q4 share
1	Palm	1,019,464	45.6%	1,174,371	43%
2	HP	465,000	20.8%	695,427	25.4%
3	Dell	178,500	8%	196,572	7.2%
4	Acer	126,602	5.7%	60,197	2.2%
5	Medion	96,942	4.3%	115,000	4.2%
	Others	349,067	15.6%	491,849	18%
	Total	2,235,575	100%	2,733,386	100%

Figures courtesy IDC

Palm's share grew by a couple of points, while HP's share declined by nearly five points. Dell slightly increased its share, while Acer and Medion both showed gains.

IDC said Medion's share grew by 287.8% compared to the previous quarter. It's selling most of its units in Western Europe. µ