It is true: palmOne is losing its market share

[Colin Dunstan]

According to a study from global market analyzer IDC, the mobile device market (smartphones and PDAs) in Western Europe grew by 38% during the third quarter of 2004, with over 1.8 million units shipped during 3Q04 compared to 1.3 million units in 3Q03. This steady increase was mainly driven by Blackberry and smartphone sales.

The interesting part of the paper is a table showing how individual mobile device vendors were doing in Q3. All of them (that includes Nokia, HP, Sony Ericsson, RIM) exhibit a growth in market share - on the expense of palmOne, who saw shipments drop by 16% year on year to 138,900 units.

And there remains a gloomy outlook:
IDC believes that palmOne will continue to struggle during the final quarter of 2004 with strong competition from white-box Pocket PC vendors. In Europe palmOne's converged device the Treo 600 remains a niche product unlikely to appeal to the majority of consumers and failing to become recognized as a true enterprise-class device. While the Treo 600 does have some operator support, IDC does not believe that it is currently being promoted to its full potential.