The Q has successfully helped Motorola stake its claim in the American smartphone market. Since its release last May, however, competition has grown more intense, with a number of new compact QWERTY keyboard-based smartphones making it to market or coming soon. These devices - which include the T-Mobile Dash, Nokia E62, and the RIM BlackBerry Pearl (a keypad/keyboard hybrid really) - have dimmed the Windows Mobile phone's star a bit. Not only will some potential customers find them more attractive and - perhaps - more powerful, all three hit or beat the Q's $200 with service contract sweet spot price point.

Motorola isn't going to stand still though: The word's number two mobile phone company is planning to upgrade the slim (.45-inch) Q with the release of a Pro edition early next year. That's the word from buywindowsmobile.com, which seems to be offering up the first confirmed evidence to that effect. The site says it learned about the Motorola Q Pro at last week's Gartner Symposium ITxpoNo from Motorola itself.

Unfortunately, no specifications were given about the Q Pro, so we don't know what hardware upgrades will be involved or even if it is for Verizion Wireless, which currently offers the Q, or for GSM/UTMS/HSPDA carriers like Cingular Wireless. Sprint, this country's second largest CDMA/EV-DO carrier hasn't even picked up the original Q model yet. (It is supposed to in the fourth quarter.)

A GSM edition would greatly expand the market for the Q worldwide, as the majority of mobile subscribers - over 2 billion - use the technology.

Motorola revealed the Q Pro will feature black casing to the current model's silver. That's one change to be sure. More importantly, however, Motorola will bundle its MOTOPRO Mobility Suite - a mobile application, security and device management platform for the enterprise - with the smartphone.

In addition to what you'd expect on-device security-wise—VPN, encryption, firewall, authentication, intrusion detection—the package even allows IT to disable the Q's camera because cameras are viewed with an increasingly jaundiced eye by corporate gatekeepers. They simply make it too easy for employees to share with others information that the enterprise would prefer to keep private.

A feature like this could also enable Motorola to release a single version of the Q Pro instead of two - one with and another sans picture-taking capabilities - as is the norm in the industry.

Reportedly, the Motorola Q Pro won't ship until the first quarter of next year, with some CIOs getting a first look at the smartphone a month before official release. This information runs contrary to earlier rumors, which said a more advanced Q - for GSM markets with 3G UTMS/HSPDA networking and maybe even Wi-Fi - would be released before the end of 2006.