Dell to pull out of the PDA market?

According to Mr. Chris Leckness on a Dell Axim forum, aximsite.com, all the signs are currently pointing to Dell pulling their line of successful PDAs and focusing on their other product lines. Dell’s Axim range have been best sellers on a number of occassions, providing ‘end-user’ PDAs in a sector full of ‘business’ models, but as Leckness recognises, the Axim is probably only a “microscopic portion” of Dell’s income, and with HP and Palm still wiping the floor with them in terms of product range, he and his fellow Axim owners are starting to panic.

With Smartphones and PDAs with integrated phones outselling and out-shipping all other handhelds last year, you would think that Dell would pick up on the trend, but the Axim range has yet to feature GSM capabilities. Palm and their OS are on the run against Windows based devices right now, yet Dell have failed to capatalise on this by expanding their range of Windows Mobile OS PDAs. In fact, Leckness makes the point that HP have stopped making the hx4700 series iPAQ, which was Dell’s X51v’s rival. As the x51v has the highest spec in the Axim range, it goes to show that HP don’t seem to fear the rise of the mighty technology giants in the sector. So what’s going to happen? Well, while companies still continue to sell refurbished Dell Axims, the range is not down yet, but with no new models rumoured, Axim lovers world-wide have a right to get nervous…

If you hear anything or have any opinions on this, post and let me know - thanks!