Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst at the firm's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker service, explains the significance of smartphones for the wider industry at present.
"The smartphone is the catalyst behind the rebound in the worldwide mobile phone market this year," he says.
He foresees "additional product introductions and an expected flurry of smartphone-buying activity in the second half of the year".
With these combining to an end-of-year anticipated growth rate of 55.4 per cent, a number of categories of semiconductors could see an increase in demand as a result.
Among them could be optical sensors, as fellow analyst iSuppli recently noted the presence of the CrucialTec optical trackpad assembly in the BlackBerry Torch.
This uses a beam of light to detect the presence and motion of the user's finger on the pad, converting the result into on-screen movement.
