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Mobile devices acting as digital filofaxes and information managers saw their fifth consecutive quarter in decline. IDC's figures for the first quarter of this year showed a more than 30 per cent sequential drop in shipments - down 12 per cent year on year to 1.9mn units.

'The handheld device market is facing stiff competition in saturated markets, while the converged mobile device market offers opportunities for new growth to handheld device and mobile phone vendors alike,' said David Linsalata, research analyst in IDC's Mobile Devices program. 'Unless handheld device vendors can successfully extend the meaningful use of handheld devices beyond PIM, the opportunity for future growth will remain firmly in the converged mobile device segment

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of the market.'

Although recent reports put RIM as the top dog in the handheld segment, usurping palmOne, different analyst groups put RIM's BlackBerry wireless email handheld in different classes. Gartner considers it a handheld while IDC thinks it's a mobile device.

Both are agreed though that mobile is where the growth is. IDC says the sector enjoyed its third consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth in excess of 100 per cent. Q1 05 saw a 134.6 per cent growth totalling a massive 8.4mn units.

palmOne proved the case in point this quarter: it outdipped the handheld sector, with shipments dropping 23.6 per cent year on year, while shipments of its mobile devices leapt 130 per cent.

Dell and Acer marked themselves out in the handheld sector, with their aggressive pricing and swift responsive to the GPS market giving the former its first double figure market share at 11 per cent, while Acer's share leapt more than 600 per cent year on year.

In the mobile space, the Finnish phone giant Nokia ferociously ate into the market, despite its existing leadership position, to earn nearly two thirds of the market and post a 204 per cent year on year growth. In fact, so voracious was its appetite, that although the market itself grew massively, other manufacturers all experienced a decline in market share.