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Study: Software for Palm sells best

Palm apparently has a firm grip on the software market for handheld devices. A recent survey by market researcher NPD Techworld shows that applications written for the PDA maker's Palm operating system accounted for more than 97 percent of handheld software titles sold in the United States during 2001. Retail sales of handheld software applications in the United States jumped to 900,000 titles in 2001 versus 225,000 titles in 2000, the study found. Games represented the majority of titles sold, nearly 40 percent. But personal productivity software and applications that help companies track inventory or other records have also grown in popularity in recent years. Palm, which has about 200,000 application developers, says there are about 13,000 applications now available for its OS.

John G. Spooner Staff Writer, CNET News.com
John Spooner
covers the PC market, chips and automotive technology.
John G. Spooner
Palm apparently has a firm grip on the software market for handheld devices. A recent survey by market researcher NPD Techworld shows that applications written for the PDA maker's Palm operating system accounted for more than 97 percent of handheld software titles sold in the United States during 2001.

Retail sales of handheld software applications in the United States jumped to 900,000 titles in 2001 versus 225,000 titles in 2000, the study found. Games represented the majority of titles sold, nearly 40 percent. But personal productivity software and applications that help companies track inventory or other records have also grown in popularity in recent years. Palm, which has about 200,000 application developers, says there are about 13,000 applications now available for its OS.