The BlackBerry is rapidly becoming the personal digital assistant (PDA) of choice for the world’s road warriors.

Latest figures from research analysts Gartner show that Research in Motion (RIM), the maker of the popular push email device, now has more than a quarter share of the entire market for PDAs and its popularity is growing.

Gartner’s figures show that nearly a million BlackBerry devices were sold in the first three months of 2006, an increase of nearly a third on last year. The company also sold a further half million 71xx devices, which are classified as smartphones and are not included in the total.

The recent arrival of push email – where new email is automatically forwarded to your device – on devices running the latest version of Windows Mobile may dent RIM’s figures in the months to come.