While the rest of the world, mainly meaning Europe and Asia, is getting the new flashy super-phones from HTC like HTC Touch Diamond and HTC Touch Pro, the USA will have to wait several months to get American versions of these phones. Why?

One obvious reason is of course that in Europe there are many times more operators than in USA and on top of that these operators are much more willing to sell HTC-manufactured phones. Notably T-Mobile Europe and Orange are always very eager to sell Windows Mobile phones. On the other hand in USA there are only 4 major operators and only 2 of them use UMTS/HSDPA-based 3G cellular networks, so in reality it is only T-Mobile USA and AT&T, but T-Mobile's 3G network is still under construction and AT&T has other priorities than Windows Mobile related to Apple corporation... so naturally no operator in USA is ready to get new HTC phones right now.... and selling phones without operators in USA is very difficult as subscribers are used to buying phones at operators (carriers)!

The other explanation however is that now in Europe where 3G is much more developed than in USA (and offers also full 3GPP UMTS based video calling with bi-directional video calls on top of super-fast 7.2 MB/s HSDPA and HSUPA up to 2 MB/s) operators started operating, apart from 2100 MHz frequency (used also in Japan) yet another frequency for 3G purposes: 900 MHz... what makes it impossible or non-economic to have a phone that would cover all 4 GSM bands and additionally 4 or 5 bands in UMTS/HSDPA/3G area... and it is not only HTC's issue but issue for all mobile phone manufacturers!

Here is what HTC says:

The initial models of Touch Diamond and Touch Pro have been optimized for European / Asian bands because HTC is launching with partners in those countries first. These models do not feature 850/1900/2100 3G as on many of our previous flagship models as European partners have now begun operating 3G on a second band – 900 MHz, and it is difficult to optimize for 4 bands of 3G as well as multiple 2G bands. The considerably smaller size of the Touch Diamond and Touch Pro compared to our previous 3G devices makes this task even more difficult, especially as many of our smaller previous models did not feature GPS. Additional models of both handsets optimized for other regions will launch in the second half of 2008.

To read more, visit: HTC explains delayed shipments to USA.