Brighthand is reporting on a topic covered by Gartner that 17.7 million handhelds shipped last year which according to them is up 18.4% over 2005. A couple key points:

60% of PDAs shipped in 2006 offered cell phone capability (up 47% from 2005) - Almost screams the fact that you folks who carry two devices will be assimilated into the convergence collective over the next couple years!

RIM shipped roughly 3.5 million devices – Crackberry’s gotta love em

Windows CE based devices account for 56% of the market share (Gartner).

Reading over the report by Brighthand and the linked report from Gartner, to be honest none of this really shocked me, except for the fact that there was no mention of Dell anywhere in the report – I personally would have thought they shipped enough devices to earn a specific mention in the report. Frankly I’m a little upset as would have loved to have seen the numbers.

Link to Worldwide Handheld Shipments Break Records Again