Compaq ships 2 millionth PDA

It is still a distant second to Palm in total market share. But Compaq said

it had reached an important milestone with the shipment of the 2 millionth

Compaq iPaq personal digital assistant. In comparison, Palm has sold more than

15 million PDA units.

Compaq executive vice president Peter Blackmore said his company hopes to

catch up to Palm by going after corporate customers who are already buying

Compaq computers. "We're working hard at doing a solution sale rather than

just a device sale," Blackmore said. "The customer is looking at us

and saying can you provide the integration skills, the application skills, the

servers to run it and the services to help run it. It's really an end-to-end

sale."

Compaq's iPaq sales rose 18 per cent to $160 million in the first quarter,

while Palm's sales fell 38 per cent. Unit shipments rose by 14 per cent. In

terms of units, however, Palm is still outpacing Compaq by a ratio better than

5:1. In 2001, Palm shipped 5.1 million units, more than the combined shipments

of Compaq, Handspring and H-P, the No. 4 handheld maker.

But the iPaq's popularity is said to be surging this year, according to

International Data Corp. The iPaq overtook the Handspring Visor as the second

best-selling PDA in the first quarter. Ironically, if the HP-Compaq merger is

approved, the combined company will be dropping one of the two PDA product

lines. Most expect the HP Jornada PDA product line to become a victim of the

merger, eliminating the second largest competitor in the market for corporate

PDA solutions.