Worldwide shipments of PDAs reached a record 3.7 million units during the second quarter, up 2.7 per cent from the same period a year ago, according to industry analyst Gartner.

Swedish vendor Ericsson on Monday laid claim to being the first vendor to complete WCDMA/UMTS 3G calls on all nine 3GPP-defined frequency bands.

Initially deployed on the 2100MHz band, vendors and operators are increasingly looking at deploying WCDMA and HSDPA on frequency bands typically used for 2G technologies such as GSM.

Using its U310 and U360 mobile platforms, Ericsson has completed 3G calls on the 2100MHz, 1900MHz, 1800MHz, 2100/1700MHz, 850MHz (in the US), 850MHz (in Japan), 2500MHz, 900MHz and 1700MHz (in Japan) frequencies.

However, analysts have previously noted that scale for such equipment would be small as existing GSM services using the traditional 2G band frequencies are likely to be around for years to come.

Moreover, to make use of 3G services in the 2G band, users would have to be equipped with new, compatible handsets.