Personal digital assistant: Encyclopedia II - Personal digital assistant - Overview

Personal digital assistant - Overview

The term "personal digital assistant" was coined on January 7, 1992 by John Sculley at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, referring to the Apple Newton. Earlier devices like the Psion and Sharp Wizard have the functionality to be considered PDAs, however. In fact, PDAs by other names were available as early as the mid-1970s -- first as very advanced calculators, then as electronic organizers, and later as palmtops. [1].

PDAs are some times refered to as "Palms" or "Palm Pilot" after an early PDA created by Palm, Inc. This usage is a case of genericized trademark, similar to refering to a tissue as a "Kleenex"; or a bandage as a "Band-Aid".

The currently major PDA operating systems are:

• Palm OS - owned by Palm, Inc.
• Windows Mobile (Pocket PC), (based on the Windows CE kernel) - owned by Microsoft
• BlackBerry - owned by Research In Motion
• Many operating systems based on the Linux kernel - free (not owned by any company) These include:
  • GPE - Based on GTK+/X11
  • OPIE/Qtopia - based on Qt/E Qtopia is developed by Trolltech, OPIE is a fork of Qtopia developed by volunteers
• Symbian OS (formerly EPOC) owned by Ericsson, Panasonic, Nokia, Samsung, Siemens and Sony Ericsson

Many PDAs run using a variation of the ARM architecture (usually denoted by the Intel XScale trademark). This encompasses a class of RISC microprocessors that are widely used in mobile devices and embedded systems, and its design was influenced strongly by a popular 1970s/1980s CPU, the MOS Technology 6502.

According to a Gartner market study, the overall market for PDAs grew by 20.7% in the third quarter (Q3) of 2005, compared to Q3 2004, with marketshare resolving as follows (by operating system):

• Palm OS for Palm, Inc. PDAs and some other licensees- 14.9% (declining)
• Windows Mobile for PDAs that comply with the Microsoft's Pocket PC specifications - 49.2% (increasing)
• BlackBerry OS for BlackBerry PDA (produced by Research In Motion) - 25.0% (increasing)
• Symbian OS - 5.8% (increasing)
• Various operating systems based on the Linux kernel for various special designed PDAs (many other supported) - 0.7% (stable)
• Other - 4.4% (stable)

The reason usually cited for the resumption in PDA market growth (after market declines in 2002 - 2004) is the growing interest in PDAs offering wireless email capabilities (such as BlackBerries), and PDAs with built-in GPS capabilities for navigation. Smartphones — mobile phones with PDA-like abilities will likely curtail PDA growth in the near future, as smartphones are becoming very popular.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Overview", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki