The death of PDAs to be replaced by smartphones, presumably, may have been overstated — at least for the time being — according to the first quarter (Q1) sales results compiled by Gartenberg (via Computerworld):

The figures, which revealed a year-on-year increase of 25% to 3.4 million units, run counter to widespread predictions that the handheld computer sector is set for a slow and loss-making death.

PDAs are cool, I’ve got two of them (Palm VIIx and an iPAQ). I use my iPAQ every day, but have since given the Palm VIIx to my oldest son. I still would rather carry one device instead of two when going out. Ultimately, I believe that will be the thing that drives people to some sort of phone/PDA hybrid, but the dark horse is VOIP. If VOIP continues to take off in strong numbers, why the need to have a cell phone? Instead, a device that has EV-DO or similar technology and uses Skype could replace.

However, the quality and connectivity has to be there for this scenario to become a reality. VOIP degrades horribly during bandwidth drains whereas cell phones and regular telephones are not. And as for connectivity? Technology like EV-DO is not widespread yet.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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