Palm Still Leads Market, but Its Share Is Slipping

Palm Inc.’s share of the hand-held computer market tumbled in 2001 but the company remained dominant, withstanding gains by rivals Compaq Computer and Hewlett-Packard, a study found.

Research firm Dataquest said last week that Palm’s slice of the global market for personal digital assistants, the popular pocket-sized information-management tools, fell to 38.6% in 2001 from 50.4% in 2000.

Palm shipped 5.1 million units, more than three times the total of its nearest competitor. But shipments in 2001 were off from 5.6million in 2000.

“It was a difficult year for Palm,” Gartner Dataquest analyst Todd Kort said. “But considering that they owned the market for several years and that serious competition has finally arrived, it is not a surprise that they would be losing some 10 points in market share from one year to the next.”