PDA sales grew by seven per cent in the first quarter of 2006, according to Gartner.

But the better-than-expected growth in the handheld market was offset by a 2.7 per cent fall in average prices.

Analyst Todd Kort says the main reason for the fall in average prices was a lack of new models being released to the market.

'The average selling price of PDAs fell compared with one year ago to $395, mostly because of the lack of many new models entering the market in the quarter and commanding premium prices,' he said.

Growth in the market is mainly being driven by sales of new BlackBerry devices which accounted for 517,000 of the units sold in Gartner's figures, a growth of 30.8 per cent in the first quarter of the year.

On the other hand, sales of Palm's PDA products declined, as did those of HP and Dell.