We have read for the last year about the death of the PDA, and it's true the stand-alone version (one without a phone) is fast disappearing.

As Tom's Hardware notes, PDA sales have fallen to a five-year low. I have one, but it was free.

As David Linsalata, the IDC analyst who delivered the report noted, ""Consumers don't see the need to invest $600 in a handheld device if a smart phone can do the same basic tasks."

But isn't this "death of the PDA" business simply a matter of semantics? Isn't this merely the creation of analysts who put technology in boxes, when everyone knows the first thing people do when they get technology is take it out of the box?

Maybe. Here's the headline on a recent story published in Ireland on the subject. "Smartphone and PDA sales go skyward."

Erin go wha?

What Sheila M. Averbuch is describing is a report from Canalys that lumps smartphones and PDAs into one grouping.

"Overall global shipments of these mobile devices rose 51 percent in the fourth quarter of 2004, compared to the same period the year before." But here we're talking about Nokia devices, a "full family of smartphones" at a variety of price points.

The problem (if there is a problem) is one of definition. Americans would put all these devices into the phone category, since they run Symbian, except for the Nokia-berry, which runs RIM's Blackberry system. The picture at the top of this item is what I've termed the Nokia-berry, actually called the Blackberry 7100t.

So what we have here is evolution, not revolution. It looks like the tide is going out because the PDA's functions are being absorbed into phones, as smartphones.

But the tide, indeed, is coming in.

And it makes sense that it would. If mobile phones remain just phones, they don't need 3G, they can run on a chip, they become free and uninteresting. Only if they do more, and give more value, can they remain relevant.

So phones are becoming cameras, and game machines, and video players, and audio players. And computers.

When they take on the functions of computers, when they become smartphones, they're PDAs.

Simple as that.