As we wrap up New Years day and the holiday season, it's a good time to recap some of the highlights of 2003, and look at what we might see this year. 2003 will be remembered as the year that pdaPhones became relevant. Prior to 2003, the pdaPhone market was primarily a niche where only the most gadget oriented of us played.

Coming into 2003, the Palm based pdaPhones manufacturers were beginning to produce second generation devices like the Kyocera 7135 and Samsung i330. Not to be outdone, Microsoft played two cards in the game... first by successfully rolling out a global push with its HTC made Pocket PC Phone Edition... then by bringing its Smartphone OS to critical mass with carriers around the world. Symbian has continued to mature its pdaPhones, with the Sony Ericsson P800 gaining widespread market acceptance, but yet still having trouble making a dent in the big US market. There were many battles for share as Microsoft pushed its way into turf that traditional mobile phone makers have ruled for years. As we reach the beginning of 2004, we now have a second generation of devices on all platforms being rolled out, and the convergence has never been better.

I believe that 2004 is going to be a tremendous year for the market. Throughout the second half of 2003, the leading industry watchers consistently predicted that the connected PDA would overtake the tradional PDA this year. With mobile data speed and affordability continuing to rise, these devices are quickly becoming a real alternative to more and more users. We will see smaller Pocket PC based pdaPhones this year, and that will increase the competition between the Palm, Pocket PC, and Symbian market leaders. I believe that 2004 will see Symbian devices begin to penetrate the US market for the first time. We will begin to see manufacturers look to build product families and options for their users, much like HP has done with their iPAQ line. More features will continue to be packed into the devices - memory, more robust cameras, Bluetooth, expansion options, etc. But most importantly, the manufacturers and carriers are asking the user community for help in improving convergence and usability. Look for more options to integrate real business applications in a connected manner as well.

At the beginning of 2003, pdaPhoneHome was in it's infancy, having been online for a little over a month. What a year we have had, and I want to thank all of you for making this a great place to get help, find out the latest information, and share ways to get the most convergence possible from today's leading pdaPhones. According to Extreme Tracking (see the lightning bolt icon at the bottom of the page), pdaPhoneHome served nearly a quarter million unique visitors in December! Our Alexa rating has climbed throughout the year and is now consistently hovering around 11K. We went through a major rewrite of the site during the year, and moved to vBulletin, a commercial web forum software platforum. We successfully completed two acquisitions - with SmartphoneForums and SmartphoneSource. This has resulted in a very diverse base of members and a critical mass of information for users of all pdaPhones.

The pdaPhoneHome Team is dedicated to making 2004 an even better year than what we saw in 2003. We should be bringing online a new download engine very soon, and have creative work underway as well. We are always looking to expand the team with dedicated enthusiasts that would like to help get the most from our pdaPhones. If you would like to help, please contact me by private message.

Thank you all for a great year, and a special thanks to the pdaPhoneHome Team members who have contributed in many more ways that can be listed.

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Mike - Been Converged?