Smartphone sales soar

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The latest research from Gartner has revealed that worldwide smartphone sales are booming, up over 75 per cent form this time last year.

But while connected devices are selling well the research found PDA sales rose barely five per cent in the same period. It was the Far East that drove the growth, with the European market losing its sales lead.

"Japan overtook Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) to become the largest market for smartphones in the first half of 2006," said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst in Gartner's computing platforms worldwide group.

"Japan now accounts for 33 percent of the worldwide smartphone market. Consumer taste and fashion, advances in personal information manager (PIM) software and messaging, and rapidly declining prices all combined to drive the strong growth in smartphone sales. On the other hand, consumer demand for PDAs is dwindling, especially with no new models from Palm in 2006."

He noted that the North American market was the only location where PDA sales still outsold smartphones, with sales in the continent accounting for nearly half of all PDA shipments worldwide.

Nokia is still the dominant force in the industry, with 42 per cent of combined smartphone and PDA sales and over half of the smartphone segment. Motorola showed the fastest growth, increasing sales by over 100 per cent, but retains only a 5.3 per cent market share.

In the first half of 2006, Palm accounted for 5 percent of the combined PDA and smartphone market, down from 8 percent in the first half of 2005. Palm saw a decrease of 26 percent in the first half of 2006.

"Palm's PDA business continues to decline as the company shifted its focus on sales of its Treo smartphones, which accounted for 57 percent of Palm's mobile device shipments in the first half of 2006," said Mr. Kort, principal analyst in Gartner's computing platform worldwide group.

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