Dell halted R&D development of PDA products since the middle of 2005, when Dell's Taiwan Design Center (TDC) completed development of the PC vendor's last Axim-series device, which was manufactured by High Tech Computer (HTC), according to market sources.

According to the sources, Dell's TDC switched all PDA-related R&D resources to the notebook segment in the middle of 2005, following the company's plan of reducing the number of its R&D staff at its handheld device division at the end of 2004. Dell has not announced new PDAs for almost a year and PDA products that it currently offers are old models that were introduced in 2004, indicated the sources. In addition, the PC vendor has not shown any moves in the PDA phone and GPS-enable PDA segments, the sources noted.

In response, a spokesperson at Dell Asia in Singapore stated that the Axims highlighted on Dell website are what the vendor currently offers customers. Other than that, Dell declined to comment on rumors or speculation about its product plans.

As reported in August 2004, Wistron, which used to be a major PDA supplier for Dell, decided to discontinue its production of PDAs. The Taiwan supplier had been producing the Axim X5 PDA for Dell since the model was introduced in 2002, but then Dell decided to outsource its Axim X30, to HTC.

According to International Data Corporation (IDC), the worldwide handheld device market continued to slide in shipments on a yearly basis in the first quarter of 2006, with a 19.4% decrease

By: DocMemory
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