Palm Computing, maker of hand-held computers, has brought its new high-end personal digital assistants (PDA) to Greater China, but has left out its budget Zire hand-held.
The Tungsten T and Tungsten W PDAs running a Chinese-language version of the latest Palm OS 5 were launched on Tuesday in Taipei. But nowhere to be seen was Palm's Zire series of cheaper PDAs, run on Palm OS 4.1.
The low-price Zire m150, introduced last month in the United States, is considered to be a likely favourite in the price-sensitive mainland market.
For the past year analysts have forecast tough times ahead for PDAs, claiming that those who are likely to want a PDA would have already bought one, while the hand-held replacement market was not as big or fast-growing as the markets for mobile phones and personal computers.
Worldwide hand-held shipments dipped more than 2 per cent in the third quarter compared with the same period last year, according to Dataquest.
Globally, 2.55 million PDAs were shipped in the third quarter, down from 2.62 million in the year-ago quarter, continuing the downward trend seen in the second quarter.
