Pocket PC market share grew

Palm and Handspring are losing ground to Microsoft

The market share of Palm and Handspring handheld market has declined and they have to cede land back to the Pocket PC platform from Microsoft. That according to the latest figures from market research firm PC Data.

The research firm reported a 60.5 percent market share of Palm in the U.S. retail market in January. In December this was 65 percent. Handspring, which has licensed the Palm OS operating system, also saw their share fall from 27 to 26 percent. The hardware works with Pocket PC manufacturers saw their share increase slightly. The Compaq iPaq went from 2 to 4 percent, Hewlett-Packard also had a share of 2 percent and rose to 3.5 percent and Casio saw their market share by 2 percent increase to 3.5 percent.

According to PC Data analyst Stephen Baker said that Palm and Handspring in December took a larger share by purchasing their cheaper models around the holidays. Baker added that the new figures are unlikely to change in market share over the long term mean. This is because the sales of the Pocket PCs, which sold more business, not as seasonal as the sale of Palm handhelds.

While total sales of handhelds in numbers and money significantly decreased compared to December, the number of units sold still doubled since January 2000, Baker says. Sales of handhelds with 85 percent compared to last year.

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