Palm, Inc. often releases new handhelds on a seasonal basis; in the spring and fall. Gartner says, however, the company will not unveil its next round of PDAs for quite some time. Brighthand quotes a recent report from the analyst firm, "We think it could be several more months before new or upgraded models are launched."

This shouldn't come as a surprise. While the overall demand for handhelds grew by 6.6 percent, the lure of models without cellular capabilities continues to decline. Palm, as with other traditional PDA vendors, has turned much of its attention to smartphones and what Gartner classifies as cellular-wireless handhelds.

It is well known that Palm has several new smartphone models on tap for this year, after the release of the Treo 700w last January. They are expected to be a mix of platforms - Palm OS & Windows Mobile - and sizes.

Gartner said Research In Motion (RIM) was the top-selling PDA vendor - with 929,883 thousand BlackBerrys shipped - last quarter; not counting the 517,000-strong BlackBerry 7100 series, which Gartner considers a smartphone.

And although Palm still landed at number two, its traditional handheld shipments declined by 25.2 percent; from 614,750 during first quarter 2005 to 459,970 last quarter. It sold 581,000 Treos, however; about 20 percent of those its new Windows Mobile-based Treo 700w model.

Windows Mobile powerhouse Hewlett-Packard hasn't updated its line of iPAQs in a very long time for the very same reason. Back in February, the computer and printer giant reorganized its handheld business unit to better take advantage of the growth of smartphones. As a result of the shakeup, handhelds became one of four units in HP's Personal Systems Group (PSG).

“The converged device market is growing at more than 60 percent a year,” PSG boss Todd Bradely said at the time. “This realignment positions the handheld team to more clearly focus on navigating this fast-paced market while (the) PSG continues to accelerate its trend of profitable growth.”

HPs cellular devices are included in Gartner's report because they fit the wireless PDA form factor the research firm defines, just as RIM’s traditional BlackBerry models do. And yet HP's total iPAQ shipments fell 30 percent last quarter due – in part - to the long delay in the release of its next-gen cellular model, the iPAQ 69xx series; especially with the iPAQ 65xx series still running Windows Mobile 2003.

Gartner also said Windows Mobile surpassed the 50 percent threshold for the first time in first quarter of 2006, with a share of 52.6 percent. RIM OS was second at 25.5 percent market share, followed by Palm OS at 13.4 percent, Symbian at 3.6 percent - most likely for Nokia's Communicator series and the PDA-like 9300 - and Linux at 1.2 percent.

The total size of the market, according to Gartner, was 3,653,550 million units. According to Canalys , the total number of smart devices shipped during the first quarter grows to 16.7 million when smartphones are added to the picture, with Nokia and Symbian dominating.