In a report that consultancy Gartner issued yesterday morning, Blackberry maker RIM slid into pole position for best-selling PDAs. RIM’s shipments, Gartner stated in its report, rose a whopping 76 percent during the first quarter of 2005, totaling 711,000 units. RIM comprised 21 percent of worldwide PDA shipments, while PalmOne accounted for 18 percent — that represents a 26 percent decline for the former market leader. Of the overall PDA market, Sumner Lemon of the IDG News Service reported: Worldwide PDA sales during the first quarter totaled 3.4 million units, compared to sales of 2.7 million during the same period last year, Gartner said. The 25-percent gain in shipments was the largest ever percentage gain for PDA sales during the first quarter, it said, noting that it did not count sales of smart phones, such as PalmOne’s Treo 650. At the same time, the average selling price of PDAs rose by 15 percent to $406, the highest since Gartner began tracking PDA prices in 2000, it said. On the PDA OS side, Microsoft’s Windows CE was the top operating system, garnering 46 percent of the market, according to Gartner. The full IDG News Service story is here. Technology Industry