IDC and Gartner have released their latest statistics regarding the health of the worldwide handheld/PDA market for the second quarter of 2004. According to IDC, the handheld market dropped by 2.2 percent over the second quarter of 2003, while Gartner found that the market grew by a robust 12 percent for the same period, breaking a string of ten consecutive quarterly shipment declines.

Why the large discrepancy? Because Gartner includes Research in Motion's (RIM's) BlackBerry Wireless Handhelds in its findings, while IDC does not. To IDC, BlackBerry handhelds, which feature cellular voice and data capabilities, are smartphones. So when IDC released its most recent statistics for mobile phones and smartphones back in May, RIM came in second behind Nokia with 12.7% of the smartphone market.

To Gartner, the PDA market's 12 percent growth year-over-year is largely attributable to RIM's significant increase in BlackBerry shipments, which rose a staggering 289 percent last quarter, giving it 5.3 percent of the market. This growth was a result of BlackBerry's e-mail capabilities, as well as a growing number of third-party applications and wireless data services that are becoming available to BlackBerry users.

In fact, RIM has gone out of its way over the last year to bring other device manufacturers, platform providers and wireless carriers on board for its push-based e-mail and data solutions, which include BlackBerry Enterprise Server for corporate customers and BlackBerry Web Client for individuals and smaller businesses.

Motorola became the most recent company to jump on the BlackBerry bandwagon, announcing an agreement earlier this week whereby it would offer BlackBerry support for its upcoming MPx and MPx220 Windows Mobile smartphones. Other RIM partners include PalmSource, Nokia, T-Mobile, O2, Samsung, Siemens, Cingular and Sony Ericsson.

Other than RIM, which place third for Gartner, the two top handheld companies for both Gartner and IDC, are, not surprisingly, palmOne and Hewlett-Packard, in that order.

According to IDC, although palmOne's shipments increased only 0.6% year-over-year with 924,364 units shipped in the second quarter, it was able to achieve sequential growth of 14.1 percent and a resulting market share gain of 4 percent, giving it 42 percent of the market. Gartner puts palmOne's market share at 33.2 percent in the second quarter, a drop of 3.2 percent from the second quarter of 2003, with 913,202 units shipped.

HP on the other hand saw significant growth in both Gartner's and IDC's tallies. For Gartner, HP's iPAQ Pocket PCs jumped 38.9 percent year-over-year to 529,773, giving it 19.3 percent of the market, a jump from 15.5 percent. IDC reports that despite an 8.2% sequential drop in shipments in the second quarter and a corresponding drop in market share of 3.0 percent to 24.1 percent, HP was able to increase shipments 39.2 percent year-over-year to 530,239.

Although most of its models were about one year old, HP's strong results demonstrate the strong reputation its iPAQ Pocket PCs have cultivated within many large organizations. In addition, HP did well in Europe because of the success in GPS modules and the strong adoption of Bluetooth.

The major player that saw significant reductions in both shipments and market share for both Gartner and IDC was Sony, which announced in early June it would be exiting the handheld market everywhere but Japan. This leaves palmOne as the only major Palm platform licensee. Gartner reported that Sony Clie handheld shipments dropped by a not surprising 35.9 percent, bringing the electronics giant's overall market share down to 6.4 percent from 11.1 percent. IDC's statistics told a similar story.

In terms of PDA operating system shipments, the Palm OS continued to lead the market with a worldwide market share of 41.7 percent in the second quarter of 2004, but its market share was down from the second quarter of 2003 when it accounted for 51 percent of the market. Windows Mobile market share in the second quarter of 2004 reached 36.6 percent, up slightly from the same period last year when its market share totaled 36.3 percent.