PDA's or "personal digital assistants," are handheld devices that function in several capacities: as a cell phone, fax sender and personal organizer, among other things. PDA's use a stylus, or pen, rather than a keyboard (www.darwinmag.com). The topics discussed in this paper include how this technology works, the business and technical problems PDA's are designed to solve and any possible limitations. In addition, how this technology may create new problems for users, and the prospects for growth in the future.
PDA's are one of the fastest selling consumer devices in history. More than 9 million of these hand-held computers have been sold. Manufacturers of the PDA industry include: 3com, Casio, Compaq, Handspring, HP, Microsoft, Palm, Philips, and Sony. Palm is the leader in this industry with Sony, HP, and Microsoft not far behind. Palm's revenue for the quarter ending Feb 2003 was $209 million (www.hoovers.com). Sony, a competitor of Palm had revenues of 13.7 million, but this is due to their sales of other products other products as well as PDA's. PDA's are just one segment inside of their industry (www.hoovers.com). Many other companies are breaking into the market. Competition means more features to choose from and decisions to make when purchasing a PDA. Hopefully, this analysis may help make someone's decision a bit easier.
PDA's fall into two major categories: hand-held computers and palm-sized computers. The major differences between the two are size, display and mode of data entry. Compared to the palm-sized computers, handheld computers tend to be larger and heavier. Much like a traditional computer, PDA's consist of a display screen (the screen is usually a touch screen, and is called a LCD display), a processor, memory, and an operating system. There is a wide range of operating systems that PDA's run on. One of the most popular of the systems is the Palm OS. Microsoft also makes a PDA operating system called Windows CE (www.
