3Com Commands Handheld Computing Market
(02/08/99, 2:16 p.m. ET)
By Jennifer Hagendorf, Computer Reseller News
techweb.com
3Com's Palm Computing Division maintained its dominance in a growing handheld computing market last year, according to a new research report.
Worldwide handheld shipments reached 3.9 million units in 1998, a 61.4 percent increase over the previous year, said San Jose, Calif.-based Dataquest.
3Com topped the vendor list, shipping 1.6 million units with a market share of 40.1 percent. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company grew its shipments 57 percent over 1997, according to the report.
"3Com's growth is particularly impressive in that the vast majority of their sales were to new users, almost doubling the installed base over 1997 levels," said Scott Miller, analyst at Dataquest, in a statement.
Sharp Electronics was second on the list with 828,000 units shipped, a growth rate of 67.4 percent over 1997. The Mahwah, N.J.-based company earned 20.8 percent of the market share, said Dataquest.
London-based Psion, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Hewlett-Packard, and New York-based Philips Electronics rounded out the top five vendors.
The influx of Windows CE-based devices in the market is expected to chip away market share from 3Com over the next two years, said analysts. The effects of these rising competitors, however, were not felt in 1998, the research showed.
Nearly 41 percent of handheld devices shipped in 1998 ran on the Palm operating system, 25 percent were CE-based, and 13 percent ran Psion's Epoc32, according to the research.
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