A look at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona
Monday, February 22nd, 2010 Karen Ambrose Hickey, Editor
We wanted to share some photos and notes from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Mobile Operators collaborate on Apps
A group comprising of some of the world’s largest mobile operators (Wholesale Applications Community, or WAC) are collaborating on an initiative that would eliminate the fragmentation of apps across disparate mobile operating systems. The goal is to enable app developers to:
- Develop apps once with the confidence that they can be run across and large number of devices and,
- Provide a suite of APIs that would enable the developers to monetize their apps leveraging the carrier billing systems.
It’s clearly a move to wrestle control away from app stores being developed by the handset manufacturers and in doing so, participate in the revenue stream. We are looking forward to future announcements, including structure, timelines, etc.
Samsung gets aggressive
Samsung is the second largest phone manufacturer after Nokia, and the company was quite visible at MWC. You could hardly go anywhere without running into a Samsung Ad promoting their new phone “Wave” which runs on a new Samsung operating system called Bada and sports a very high resolution display. They also launched their own App Store for developers. I was told that Samsung will continue to support multiple operating systems including Windows, Android and Symbian. It’s not clear for how long they intend to do this, but the Wave is squarely targeted at the iPhone and positions to capitalize on the recent trends in mobile social networking.
Psiloc and iPass
The Psiloc exhibit had a large display promoting their upcoming partnership with iPass. They are very excited to add iPass global Wi-Fi to their list of premium services. In addition, they will be launching a series of location-based services for the business traveler. Many of these services will be based on direct feedback they’ve received from their existing customer base.
Microsoft finally releases Windows Phone 7 Series
The Microsoft Windows 7 announcement was one of the bigger events. The Microsoft booth in one of the main halls was packed as we all stood in breathless anticipation for what everyone knew was going to be the release of the new Windows Mobile operating system. They even had a large digital clock on a wall with a dramatic countdown. 5 seconds, 4, 3, 2, 1…….nothing.
Absolutely nothing happened for 20 mins after the countdown ended. What an anticlimax. Finally Ballmer appears via video (he was in a separate room reserved for VIPs). He gave a brief intro and then someone did a demo. To ensure clear differentiation from Windows Mobile 6.X, the new OS is called Windows Phone 7 series. It’s a complete rewrite and a totally new approach. According to Ballmer, they started from scratch. I noticed a few things:
- There is a heavy emphasis on social networking (seamless integration with Facebook and Twitter)
- The Zune music player capabilities are fully integrated
- Although they demoed some enterprise capabilities, it feels like a very consumer centric OS
- The OS is still a work in progress (the demo uncovered areas that were obviously “under construction” and there were no actual devices that attendees could play with). Looks like they are back in the game but it’s going to be tough climb.
Operators ramp up migration to LTE
During the keynote on day two, the GSMA was proud to announce that several CDMA operators including Verizon and China Telecom had joined the GSMA. They believe the industry is quickly uniting around LTE which is compatible with GSM technology. Strangely, there was no mention of WiMAX which just goes to show how confident they are that LTE will become the prevailing standard. The rapid development of mobile apps and their impact on consumers and operators was also discussed.
For more pictures, see our Facebook page.
For more comments on MWC, see the post from Steven Wastie, Enterprise Mobility left on the edge at the Mobile World Congress
Tags: Android, Blackberry, carriers, iPhone, mobile operator, Nokia, Samsung, smartphone, Symbian
