Carlo wrote a piece for Techdirt titled When The PDA Evolved, Its Manufacturers Didn't.
Carlo's point is that the PDA market is evolving, and he is right.
Some of the comments left by readers include two people who disagree with Carlo. One reader commented that PDAs that also are phones are a nightmare, and are too expensive. Another reader commented on how PDAs are more functional, for example, his grandchildren can play games on the PDA.
I would like to expand a bit on this topic.
The “nightmare” piece mentioned by one of readers boils down to “configuration”, and is yet to be addressed. A lot of the handsets are underutilized simply because they are not properly configured out of the box, and thus some of the functionality is unusable by default. The “functionality or gaming” piece mentioned by the other reader is not accurate, as the same kind of applications that run on the PDA will run OK on the smartphone versin of the PDA, for example, the Treo 6xx and 7xx should run OK the same applications and games that run on the Palm OS PDA.
There will always be PDA-only users. Even these users who resist convergence will be using voice on their PDAs through Wi-Fi and VOIP on their PDA. As we move on, more and more smartphones will be put on user's hands. This is driven by 2 factors: 1) device convergence, where PDA functionality is integrated into phones, and 2) cost, through carrier subsidies, which is helping put more of these expensive smartphones on people's hands – this is in contrast to PDAs, where subsidies are basically non-existent. All these results in more smartphones than PDAs on user's hands.
ceo