PDA Evolution

[ChaoticBlankness]

It is my opinion as recent reports indicated that the use of PDA's were becoming a dieing thing and sales of PDA have been very low the last couple years.

On the flip side SmartPhones are becoming increasingly popular. Wouldn't you agree that the SmartPhone is the natural evolution of the PDA?

PDA had been suffering lower market share as laptops have become cheaper, thinner, and "easier to use" than a PDA. PDAs are also not x86 compatible. So merging PDA's and Phones has saved the day in this respect. Tying something useful to something else useful.

Now consider this, the VIA Mobile-ITX standard and the rise of cheaper flash memory and Solid State Drives in general. The Mobile-ITX uses a VIA C7-M 1Ghz ultra low power x86 processor. It is more than small enough to fit in a PDA/SmartPhone form factor.

We could easily start seeing x86 PDA/SmartPhones with the x86 version of Windows Mobile 6. It is my belief that this will be the merger of the UMPC and the SmartPhone. We'll call this the "UltraSmartPhone" just to stay on the same page.

I may be rambling a little right now (sub-7 hours sleep in the last 2 days) but I believe that the "UltraSmartPhone" could easily cut into the Laptop/Tablet PC market share. Any thoughts?

 

[Darknova]

Actually I see where you are going, and yes, I do think we will see x86 compatible Smart Phones. I also believe the UMPC will fail miserably just like the Tablet PC did, as they were both more of an experiment than anything else. I've had the chance to play with a UMPC and I can safely say it will never replace my PDA. It does nothing more than what I need my PDA for, and does less than my desktop, it doesn't really have a place, but that is of course my own opinion.

I've followed the evolution of the Pocket PC for a few years, and with Windows Mobile 5 they integrated the phone version into the standard version so every PDA is technically capable of being a smart phone (with the necessary hardware and butchering of your device of course).

I do think that they will learn a lot from the UMPC and will use that to further the Smart Phone evolution, especially as they are becoming a lot more popular.