With tears in my eyes I read the news at Brighthand this morning:

Toshiba confirms that it is leaving the U.S. handheld market, plus according to enterprise customers in Europe, Toshiba representatives told them that Toshiba will be out of the handheld market by the end of the year.

It also means that Toshiba has no plans to release its e830 in the US. First Sony, now Toshiba. This leaves only Dell and Asus in the market for PPC with VGA displays. And who knows, maybe it is only question of time before they leave as well?

I hate to admit it, but the future handheld market belongs to smartphones ;(

Hold on a for a moment, the article says nothing about SmartPhones being the reason for their departure. Most likely, Toshiba is leaving the US market because HP and PalmOne have nearly all the market share combined and there's no room for smaller players.

I have a few friends who have these "SmartPhones"..The only problem with some of them is when they crash and you have to make an emergency call...it then becomes a "BIGGER EMERGENCY!!" , I think a phone should be just a phone!, I carry a Clie and a T610, works great!, when the PDA runs low on Battery it does not affect the phone, I don’t think size is that big an issue, they are both small and there are even smaller available,
So unless they can have two separate O.S.'s that can work together yet independent of each other in the event of problems where if the PDA crashes it won't shut down the phone or if you are using the PDA in heavy use ,it does not affect the battery of the phone, or some other logical approach to these issue's and with many others.

Laurens I am a strong advocate of PDAs and I would hate seeing them being swamped away by smartphones.

Yet, sadly it seems to me that most people favor buying a smartphone nowadays. Maybe Toshiba's departure can be explained by the strong dominance of other players like HP. But how does this explain Sony's departure and its stronger focus on its Sony Ericsson line?

It seems plain that the money is in smartphones right now. I think that part of this may be attributable to the fact that phone purchases are often heavily subsidized by the service providers, so that customers are more likely to upgrade their phones every year, unlike PDAs. On the other hand, I have read various references that the service providers wind up putting a squeeze on the manufacturers to deliver as cheaply as possible, which has got to hurt profit margins. If we could just be a fly on the wall in one of these decision-making meetings...

I think it's a damn shame. I too, prefer separation of my phone from my PDA. It seems like it's fine if you're just using it for PIM purposes, perhaps a little MP3. But sonypda's point is good. What if you suck the battery down all day reading and then have some critical calls to make? Do you have to carry a spare battery? No easy answers here.

I think the PDA is in a rapid evolutionary cycle right now and manufacturers do not know which way to jump. I see devices with PDA functionality splitting along several different paths:

1. PDA's as we know them now, but the features and pricepoints will change.

2. Smartphones.

3. Personal media players/PDA combos. (eg. mp3 or video players with PDA functions built in or dedicated ebookreaders that also have PDA functions)

4. Gaming PDA's (eg. Tapwave)

There may also be a market for devices that also do these things without PDA functionality, but I think the concept of pda sized minicomputers and OS's are here to stay.

You left one out Brad. The PDA/Smartphone combination. Smartphone's aren't truly PDAs so there is a distinction between them. What I think evolution will create is much more practical or flexible versions of devices such as the PocketPC Phone Edition or the Symbian UIQ. That is what many of us see the direction that the market will turn in regards to what will eventually win out in the Smartphone and PDA question.

JJB

Im currently living in Japan and I was very supprised to see a month ago about when the salesman told me that toshiba was no longer going to produce PDAs. Especially since I bought my Toshiba e755 the day prior.