It is obvious from looking at statistics that the handheld computing market is changing into something else. Not that people dislike the idea of carrying around a computer in the pocket, but rather it is a matter of what kind of functionality this computer should have. Traditionally the PDA market has been centered around the idea of the “PIM” - personal information manager. Now it looks like it is more likely to be centered around a communication device (phone or phone/email/chat/whatever), and/or a music player (like an `iPod). Remember that PDAs were introduced long before there were mobile phones that you could carry in your pocket. As an consumer electronics designer, today you have a number of “building blocks” that you could potentially combine together as a consumer device:
So, what is the more likely combination of features to “take over” the market? I don’t think that there will be one particular combination of these (or other) features that will dominate the market. At the moment it looks like devices centered around the phone, and those around media (music and video) players are the most popular. They can be, and are, combined with the traditional PDA functions such as calendar and address-book. The first of these devices was the Bellsouth/IBM “Simon”, a huge device that I doubt had much success in the market place. Only when the ”PDA-phones” shrunk to the size of the Ericsson R380 there was a chance that they would become popular. One of the more popular ones was, and still is, the Nokia Communicator (not featured here yet).
This is what HP, one of the PDA giants have to say on the matter of traditional PDAs (Cnet News March 2006):