From PDA to Smartphone: A Market Transition

In the late 1990s, handheld organizer devices known as “Personal Digital Assistants” became popular among busy professionals looking to conveniently store and access schedules, phone numbers, personal notes, and simple software applications on an electronic device. These devices were generally equipped with a touch-sensitive screen, and could be connected to Personal Computers, via a simple “hot-syncing” process.

PDAs were seen as a compact, convenient, and efficient alternative to traditional pen-and-paper notepads, and were adopted by millions of professionals, businesspeople, and consumers around the world.

The market for PDAs began to decline in 2002, however, due to their lack of connectivity with wireless networks, and the increased availability of organizer features on cellular phones. This set of circumstances led to an odd transition, as higher-end cell phones evolved into a whole new breed of Personal Digital Assistants: smartphones.

Demand for standalone PDAs continued to gradually decline over the next few years, while smartphones — with their advanced software, wireless web access, and mobile email capabilities — experienced a sharp increase in popularity.

In 2005, Ontario-based BlackBerry maker, Research In Motion, surpassed standalone PDA pioneer, Palm Inc., as the leading manufacturer of Personal Digital Assistants. This was done with the help of wireless carriers, who marketed smartphones in much the same way as other cellular devices.

Palm, and other standalone PDA makers such as Hewlett-Packard, responded by launching their own web-ready smartphones, in hopes of grabbing a share of the fast-growing wireless handheld market.

Palm began heavily promoting its line of “Treo” smartphones including the highly popular Treo 650, and more recently the Treo 700w and 700p models, which run on Windows Mobile and Palm OS software platforms, respectively.

In the fall of 2005, the world’s leading cell phone manufacturer, Nokia, made a high-stakes play for the enterprise smartphone market with its E-Series mobile voice and data devices. Motorola later followed suit by releasing the “Q” smartphone, in hopes of upsetting the dominance of Research In Motion’s BlackBerry email devices.

By the middle of 2006, most analysts agreed that the PDAs and high-end cellular phones had merged into a whole new class of devices. Unlike the “personal organizers” that preceded them, smartphones are, by definition, equipped with some kind of wireless internet access as well as cellular voice service, allowing them to serve as fully-functional pocket-sized communication platforms.

As time goes by, these devices are gaining an even greater number of features, including GPS navigation, gaming, wireless VoIP, music downloads, and multimedia capabilities.


Published by TeleClick Enterprises
Edited by Jeremy Maddock