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Better known as the T-Mobile Sidekick, Danger's hiptop is perhaps the sleekest and cheapest—free with some service contracts—consumer orientated smartphone around with a QWERTY thumb-keyboard. The company recently reported that users of the device surpassed 3 billion mobile instant messages (IM) sent and received last year.

That's compared to the 22.8 billion total SMS messages sent across all wireless carriers in the United States during the same period, according to recent data from Jupiter Research (owned by the same parent company as this Web site).

Although Danger's numbers take into consideration the eight mobile operators who offer hiptop in six different countries around the world, they are still impressive for a device, platform, and company that has only been around for a couple of years.

Danger CEO Hank Nothhaft attributes hiptop's success to its simplicity.

He asserts, “Because of the hiptop’s intuitive user-interface and overall ease-of-use, it has become the premier mobile platform for instant messaging. IM has clearly become a killer app for our users. And if our current growth trends continue, we will support upwards of 10-15 billion mobile instant messages in 2005.”

The latest edition of the smartphone—called the Sidekick/hiptop II even though it is third generation of the device—has been available since September. For more on the smartphone, see Review: Sidekick II - T-Mobile's Cool New Smartphone.