RSS
Twitter
PDAs Make A Comeback? Or Research Firm Falls For Marketing Spin?
from the nice-try dept
For years, we've been wondering why there's so much emphasis on "PDAs vs. Smartphones", when they're really just an evolution of the same market. When PCs started shipping regularly with modems and ethernet cards, analysts didn't claim that "SmartComputers" were a separate market. Still, many people were surprised to hear that PDAs made a "comeback" last quarter, led by RIM's Blackberries. RIM's Blackberries? Wait a second... those are all connected! What makes them any different from smartphones? Apparently, it's all in the marketing. Analyst house Gartner simply decided to use whatever moniker the vendor gave their devices. So, when RIM calls its connected PDAs "PDAs" then that's what they are -- even if they're similar to the smartphones that were excluded from the study.
Reader Comments (rss)
(Flattened / Threaded)
Blackberries aren't (necessarily) phones
Most Blackberries on the market today don't have phone capabilities - they're fancy two-way pagers with corporate e-mail capabilities and PDA functionality tacked on.
Only the latest generations and only the higher end of the price range Blackberries are also a phone.
I don't know of any "smartphones" that don't have phone functionality buried in them somewhere.
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Re: Blackberries aren't (necessarily) phones
If I promise to use my Treo's cellular connection just for data and make no voice calls, can we include it in the PDA numbers?
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Add Your Comment