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Originally Posted by ignatz
The sales of Palm-style PDAs may be flagging, but from this point on I doubt that we will lack for portable devices that can serve the multiple purposes of PIM functionality, ebook reading, game playing, media playing, etc, etc... So what's "dying"?
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Well, Palm sales are flagging simply because 1. the market is saturated and 2. they haven't come out with anything worth upgrading to. But they will probably fix that sometime this year.
What's dying is the old concept of the PDA. As you correctly point out, the demands on the functionality of the handheld devices are going up. No longer are they just simple calendaring and contact lists. They serve many other uses.
But this bothers me in that it seems that the in the race to provide all these new functions, the PDA-type apps are falling by the wayside. In my case, calendaring, to do, memos and other personal-data type of applications is what I use my Palm for 75% of the time (eBook reading for the othe 25%). But game playing, media playing, etc. is only something "nice" to have once in a while and if my Palm didn't do those things, it really wouldn't bother me.
I have a Zodiac2 and while it's a great game/media device, it is a poor PDA. Even my Sharp SL-C760 is a wonderful device, but, again, poor on the PDA side. Companies need to realize that the majority of people who buy these are doing to use them for non-entertainment purposes. Playing MP3s, videos, games, etc. is nice and will break the tie between two similar devices, it's not a good enough reason to purchase a device.