• by Masha Geller , April 5, 2002

It’s been a while since we’ve talked about ads on PDAs and judging by the number of requests I get to cover the topic, there’s not much interest in advertising on personal digital assistants out there. Moreover, I did a quick search of eMarketer’s eStat database and judging by the results, no one in the last year has even bothered to find out how much money - if any – is being spent on PDA ads.

Not to belittle companies like Vindigo, which have a cult consumer following and offer advertisers opportunities similar to geo-targeted yellow page listings, but as an advertising vehicle the PDA is largely an uncharted territory.

Nevertheless, consumers continue to buy PDA devices, at least according to the latest data from Gartner Dataquest, so here’s a quick 'potential PDA audience' update:

After several years of rapid growth, the worldwide PDA market slowed considerably in 2001 and this more moderate level of growth is expected to continue in 2002. Gartner Dataquest projects 15.5 million PDAs will be shipped in 2002, an 18% increase from 2001 shipments of 13 million units. In 2001, the industry experienced a similar growth rate of 18.3%. This was considerably below 2000 shipment growth of 114%. But, Gartner forecasts that the PDA market will regain some of its strength in the second half of 2002 and growth will be even stronger in 2003 as the economy recovers.

Gartner also says that the market continues to shift toward devices with wireless features, color displays, more powerful processors, and more storage capacity, and that will likely cause end-user spending to increase more than 20% in 2002.

Bottom line? Based on all these figures, many people predict that PDAs will soon become a valuable ad vehicle, if only because “ads follow eyeballs.” Call me a skeptic, but I’m still waiting for my cell phone to call me with a half-price latte offer when I walk past the local Starbucks. How about you?