What happens on the pocket PC market? FACTS AND FIGURES

After the take-off in sales of the pocket PCs in 2000 and 2001 (up to 114% and 18.3% accordingly), there has been a second year running decline on the market. In 2002 sales decreased by 9.1% as compared with the previous year, and during the first two quarters of 2003 continued to decline. There are some reasons for this decline, but most observers consider it to be a general recession in the economy of the developed countries. Another reason for the reduction in sales is a competition between pocket PCs and smartphones, which features are similar to those which pocket PCs can offer. But today we will speak not so much about the numbers, as about the actual events that occur on this quite an interesting market.
POCKET PC. Perhaps the main event on the pocket PC market was the presentation of a new operating system Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC (formerly known as Pocket PC 2003) on June 23, 2003, built on the core of Windows CE.NET.
Hewlett-Packard, the largest player in the Pocket PC sector, this summer introduced five new models. The most interesting model seems to be iPaq 2210. The presence of two expansion slots (which is not typical for the iPaq line), miniature size, Bluetooth and the new operating system made this model a "summer hit".
Toshiba. Along with the official release of the new operating system the company introduced a new budget pocket PC Toshiba E350. Model E350 is the continuation of the pocket PC Toshiba E310/330 line with modernized filling and improved (transflective) display.
Asus. This producer could boast of only one model this summer - Asus A620. Unusually enough, but the model is equipped with only one expansion slot. This is not a SD / MMC slot, as it was in the previous A600 model, but a Compact Flash. Later, after the appearance of A620, Asus has released a modification of this model, which differed in presence of Bluetooth support (Asus A620BT).
PalmOne. Undoubtedly, the most significant summer event on the Palm devices market is a takeover by the Palm Company of its competitor - the Handspring Company. In the summer Palm released the Tungsten T2 - its updated "top-end" model Tungsten T, equipped with Bluetooth.
Sony. Besides the permanent reduction of prices for the older models the company has released several new models. The new Clie-PEG-NX80V and the NX73V look like the refined models of the old line.
For the first time Sony used the pocket PC central processor of its own production instead of Intel “stones”, which it used before. Together with the processor, which operates at a frequency of 8 MHz to 123 MHz, there are two-dimensional graphics accelerator, the Memory Stick PRO expansion slot interface, an interface for a built-in camera and other components on a single chip.
To sum up.
Microsoft Company imposes quite severe restrictions on the devices, which have «Pocket PC» logo, beginning from the notorious resolution of 320x240 pixels, ending with the size of the inscription on the pocket PC device. Hence there are narrow price bands, according to which the devices are sold. In fact, it is $ 250 - $ 600, minimum and maximum price level accordingly.
Price variation on Palm devices is much broader - from $ 100 for a simple Zire, to $ 700 for Sony UX50. There are no stringent requirements to producers that allows to experiment with form-factor of devices and with a screen resolution, that Sony successfully does. The Palm operating system is also imperfect. For example, it does not support different screen resolutions for programs (to the resolution of 480x320 or 320x480 pixels you will have to adapt the program specially, it will not "stretch" in full screen automatically). Finally, without multi-tasking the work with network applications is a real torment. Therefore all that remains is to wait for the beginning of 2004 and the release of a new version of Palm OS.

Алексей Сергеевич Шумейко
Директор магазина «Gadgets» С-Петербург
Alexey Shumeyko, St Petersburg

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