The Palm handheld platform continued to maintain a strong lead over Windows CE in the US last month, according to the latest data from market researcher NPD Intelect. Palm Computing ended the year with a marketshare of 73.6 per cent, up 8.1 per cent on December 1998. Windows CE took around 25 per cent, divided between products from Casio, Sharp, Hewlett-Packard and Compaq. However, it's worth noting that Palm's share represents a fall of six per cent on the 77.9 per cent marketshare it took in September 1999. No great surprise, this, perhaps given WinCE's consumer-friendly colour support, something far less likely to show up outside the Christmas sales period. Casio's share of the market totalled 17.4 per cent, down 3.8 per cent on December 1998. Sharp took 5.3 per cent (a 4.3 per cent increase), HP 1.2 per cent (down 0.2 per cent) and the Big Q 1.1 per cent (up 0.9 per cent). Overall, sales of handheld devices during December 1999 rose 169 per cent over December 1998's figures. ®