Second quarter shipment figures for PDA-phones show a growth of 330.7 percent over the same quarter in 2002.
"With form factors and operating systems improving, this market is poised for steady growth," said Ross Sealfon, research analyst in IDC's mobile device program.
One reason for the huge jump: converged handheld devices or "smart phones" are starting from a very small base. The market now makes up 1.7 percent of the total mobile phone market, compared with 0.5 percent in the same quarter one year ago, according to the report.
However, research firm Allied Business Intelligence pins a higher figure on smart phone sales. It estimates that nearly 3.6 million units of smartphones and smartphone-PDAs were sold in the second quarter, representing about 3.3 percent of the overall handset market. With 61 percent share, Nokia continues to dominate in converged devices, trailed far behind by Sony Ericsson and Motorola with 10.2 and 5.6 percent share respectively, said IDC.
Handspring lost its position among the top five vendors due to an aging product line, based on the Palm operating system. The Symbian platform, used by Nokia and Sony Ericsson, remains far and away the most dominant.
Microsoft's recently launched Smartphone platform doesn't appear in the top five, though pundits have predicted that with the software giant's support, it is bound to make its mark in the market soon.
Overall, shipments of plain handsets again grew strongly in the second quarter, with the winners being Finnish maker Nokia, Korean firm Samsung and joint venture Sony Ericsson. These firms kept or expanded market share at the expense of US maker Motorola and Korean firm LG, said the report.
Nokia maintained its share and is strengthening its presence in the US and global CDMA markets, areas dominated by Motorola. No. 2 maker Motorola's market share dropped last quarter to 13.4 percent, from 17.4 percent a year ago, due mainly to stiff competition in Europe and Asia, said IDC.
In addition, Motorola shipped just 9 new models so far in 2003 and is only just beginning to ship camera-phones, which have proven to be moderately successful for other makers.
Third-place Samsung's aggressive product strategy, success in the CDMA market and a growing GSM presence has increased its market share to 10.1 percent. It continues to close the gap on Motorola, said IDC.
No. 5 maker Sony Ericsson has been lifted by the success of the PDA-phone T610 in Europe and its camera-phone efforts in Japan. By growing share to 5.7 percent, the struggling venture makes a comeback to the top five list. Overall, 118 million phones were shipped last quarter, of which almost 2 million were smart phones, said IDC.
