Handheld sales numbers around the world have increased substantially during the second quarter (April - June) according to Gartner Research. This breaks a string of quarterly year-on-year declines in shipments that has persisted for over two years.

According to market research firm Gartner Dataquest, 2.75 million handhelds were shipped during this time period, 12 percent more than during the same quarter of 2003. The major reason for this increase was Research in Motion's shipments of BlackBerry devices. The Blackberry shipments increased 289 percent year-on-year, and 26 percent over the previous quarter. RIM is now just barely behind HP in the handheld market.

Another report by IDC was quite different. According to IDC, the handheld market dropped by 2.2 percent over the second quarter of 2003, but IDC was not including RIM in their numbers.