Metric: PDA sales continue to slide

With sales of smart phones and other converged devices growing, global PDA device sales declined for the sixth quarter in a row. According to researcher IDC, second quarter 2005 shipments fell 20.8 percent compared to Q2 2004 and 24.9 percent compared to Q1 of this year. Consumers who used to buy PDAs, or even wireless PDAs, are now buying smart phones like the popular Treo.

Critics of the "PDA slide" theory, however, claim that this differentiation is meaningless. They counter that some smart phones are more PDA-centric and others are more phone-centric and that any attempt to differentiate between these form factors is abitrary. Many of these so-called smart phones, like the BlackBerry or the Treo, could just as easily be classified as PDAs, some insiders claim.

For more on the latest PDA numbers:
- check out this piece from InfoWorld