The worldwide market for traditional PDAs continued to dive during the third quarter of 2006, according to IDC's latest Worldwide Handheld QView.

IDC found that total worldwide shipments of non-telephony enabled handheld devices fell to 1.1 million units, down 15.4 per cent from the previous quarter and down 31.3 per cent from the same quarter a year ago.

This marks the 11th consecutive quarter of year-on-year decline for the worldwide handheld market.

"Contributing significantly to the decrease in shipments this quarter was a lack of new devices being announced or shipped to the market," said Ramon Llamas, research analyst in IDC's Mobile Markets team.

"Vendors continue to rely on models that have been on the market anywhere between two and four quarters.

"Without many new devices in the third quarter, it brings into question how shipments will fare during the fourth quarter when vendors typically expect a boost as new devices come to market."

However, IDC noted that the absence of new models does not necessarily mean the end of the handheld market.

"There are users who remain fiercely loyal to their handheld devices, and smaller niche users have emerged," said Llamas.

"For example, in some developing markets the handheld device has been tremendously important in self-education, enabling users to continue learning outside the classroom once they have downloaded content through the PC.

"If usage for specific non-network tasks like self-education increase, we could expect an increase in shipments and possibly new devices optimised for particular tasks."

Palm retained its position as the overall market leader, but was not immune from seeing its shipments drop year over year. After releasing the Palm Z22 and Palm TX nearly a year ago, the company has yet to refresh its portfolio with a new device.

HP remains the clear number two vendor in the handheld device market and the largest Microsoft Pocket PC-enabled handheld device vendor, with more than double the shipments of the next two vendors.

Of the leading vendors, HP suffered the largest year-on-year decline in shipments.