palmOne has a history of releasing new handhelds in the spring and fall. With the current emphasis by PalmSource and palmOne on the future of smartphones and becoming important players in the that market, one might wonder where palmOne stands when it comes to creating new PDAs without a cellular component.

In an interview with the BBC, palmOne CEO Todd Bradley does express strong interest in extending further into smartphones, such as the company's Treo 600, and expanding the company's market share. However, he does state that the opportunity with regular PDAs is still there. And palmOne will release new PDAs next month and continue to release new models in its Zire and Tungsten handheld lines.

Bradley didn't offer much in the way of details about next month's new handhelds other than that they would include a lot more multimedia storage.

Some details about a couple of potential new PDAs have been circulating however. These include sequels to the Zire 71, the company's first handheld with a digital camera; the Tungsten E, a mid-priced professional model; and the Zire 21, an entry level PDA.

The Zire 71 follow-up, the Zire 72, is rumored to look like the Tungsten E and include 64MB of RAM with 56 MB available to the user, and like the Zire 71, a digital camera. The Zire 71 only has 16 MB of memory and the camera on the Zire 72 is purported to be a far superior at 1.3 megapixels. The handheld would run Palm OS 5.2.1, now called Garnet. It may bring Bluetooth to the Zire line also.

The Zire 31 would replace the current monochrome Zire 21 with a color 160x160 resolution display and a 200MHz processor, and the Tungsten E2 would add Bluetooth and a 320x480 display.

According to a IDC report, handheld device shipments rose 3.2% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of last year compared to the same period in 2002, while the number of handhelds shipped grew by 52.7% to 3.4 million units. For the full year, however, the handheld market decreased to 10.4 million units; a drop of 17.9% from the previous year's shipments of 12.6 million units. I