HTC Touch Pro2,

The fourth quarter releases of smartphones including Android and BlackBerry, along with the success of the HTC Touch Pro2 are helping fuel a positive outlook for the wireless market in Q4. We talked with senior research analyst Ramon Llamas at IDC who just released the IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.

"The HTC Touch Pro2 is the kind of Windows experience that people have been wanting to see," remarked Llamas about the sold-out Windows smartphone. The HTC Touch Pro2 went on sale in September at Verizon, sold-out, came back-in-stock for a day and then sold-out again.
Another factor, contributing to his positive outlook for smartphones, is Verizon's Droid, "Everyone is optimistic on many fronts. Motorola is hopeful and Verizon is very positive," Llamas said.
Llamas pointed out that Motorola and Verizon are positioning the Droid feature-set squarely against the iPhone which shows their confidence in Droid.
Smartphones such as the Motorola Cliq, HTC Hero, BlackBerry Storm2 and BlackBerry Bold 9700 contribute to the optimism for the growing smartphone market.
"The mobile phone market is showing the first signs of improvement since the onset of the economic crisis," Llamas said "During the third quarter, we saw a number of channels promoting older devices at significantly lower prices. For many, this was enough to spur demand and push volumes higher. Now that we have moved into the fourth quarter, vendors are setting the stage for further gains by launching their flagship devices to meet pent-up demand."