CTIA2010 – Innovation is alive and well

Monday, March 29th, 2010 Karen Ambrose Hickey, Editor

With a few days behind me to digest the mountain of information coming out of CTIA, I’m left with a few overriding impressions:

1. Mobile Apps have hit primetime.

Everywhere you looked, Mobile Apps for all platforms featured heavily – from the big incumbent brands, as well as, the independent app developers. Nokia’s entire stand seemed to be dedicated to OVI and RIM’s stand has row after row of app demos. Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month had a similar showing of Mobile App announcements.

2. Confidence is back

Maybe this was the 45 minute line at Starbucks or the sprawling stands <read: lots of $$$> from Nokia, Kyocera, Qualcomm, Samsung and others, but CTIA felt crowded, busy and high energy.

3. UI’s are getting way better.

I learned a whole new set of acronyms during an IDC briefing on display technologies and the ‘UI/UX’ was on show everywhere you looked – from a very shiny new screen from Samsung to Windows Phone 7. It goes without saying that Android was everywhere.  However the standout was NTT DoCoMo’s “Eye-controlled earphones.”
The demo guy became legendary and had to have had serious eye strain by the end of the show.  If the UI is a proxy for the underlying OS then it’s no wonder there is so much focus on getting this right.

4. Great new devices continue to hit the shelves.

The HTC EVO on Sprint 3/4G is creating device envy everywhere and WiMAX speeds in more and more locations is very welcomed. It’s getting really hard to keep up with the volume of phones, form factors and Platforms coming out.  According to Forbes, every 18mins a new phone is announced.  As a consumer, this is an exciting time to have so much choice and access to so much innovation.

For an Enterprise IT manager on the hook for managing these devices when they are connecting to an Enterprise application or network – - it looks pretty daunting.

Tags: 3G network, 4G network, Android, mobile apps, smartphone