HP iPaq takes crown from Palm in Asia

NEWS

For the first time, Hewlett-Packard has ousted Palm as the number one handheld maker in Asia-Pacific market share, according to market analyst Gartner. While HP is understandably pleased, Palm says the picture may change once its products gain a firmer foothold in key countries. Compared with the same period last year, HP gained 28 percent in units shipped during Q1 2003, while Palm slipped 34 percent over the same period. Overall, HP chalked up 70,365 in units shipped first quarter 2003 -- up from 55,135 over the same period last year -- while Palm shipped 56,410 units, down from 86,000 the year before. "The range of products that HP has is very attractive right now, and they have made good inroads into big markets such as South Korea," said Lillian Tay, an analyst with Gartner's Asia-Pacific group. HP commanded 16.2 percent of the handheld market in the first quarter of this year, compared with Palm's 13 percent. This is a reverse of the same period in 2002, when HP and Palm had 9.9 percent and 15.5 percent market share respectively. "With the introduction of both the HP iPAQ Pocket PC h5450 and h1910, HP now has an iPAQ for every customer segment," said Raymond Wah, a vice president with HP's Personal Systems Group. Most of the sales have been in retail, with about 15 percent going to firms integrating the iPaq into business applications. "As the economy picks up, we are confident IT purchases will pick up," he said. Palm, on the other hand, said that a fall to 13 percent from 15.5 percent is "very small". "This slight decline is despite Palm not being present in the China market until its recent launch and shipments into the market last month," said Sharon Ee, regional marketing director for Palm Asia Pacific. There was also a shift in handheld operating system (OS) market share in Asia, according to Tay. Beginning late last year, the pendulum began to swing in favour of Windows-based systems such as Pocket PC, used in the iPaq. The systems losing the most ground to Windows? Not Palm OS, but proprietary systems used in low-cost products from firms based in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China, which have also suffered the brunt of the drop in demand that caused the PDA market shrink 22 percent in unit shipments compared with the same period last year, according to Gartner. Today, almost half of all handhelds in the Asia-Pacific run Windows. The Palm OS contingent has dropped slightly, from 21.9 percent in the first quarter of last year, to 20.2 percent this year. Despite this, Sharon Ee of pointed out bright spots in Asia-Pacific for Palm, such as China, were it has just begun sales. "We see China's handheld landscape evolving from proprietary OS handhelds to industry standard OS devices. This represents a potential for Palm."

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