The Mobile World Congress kicks off in Barcelona, Spain, today. It’s the world’s largest exhibition for the mobile industry, gathering mobile operators, vendors and content owners from across the world. The event was previously known as the 3GSM World Congress, and is still often referred to as 3GSM.
The big news at MWC 09 centers around handsets, LTE infrastructure, Mobile WiMAX, Femtocells, chips , software applications and applications stores. Here’s their Agenda, Keynotes, Exhibitor Listing, News Releases and Show Daily
Literally thousands of press announcements and news stories have been filed. C/Net, Engadget, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, TechMeme, Telephony, RCR Wireless and Unstrung do an excellent job of reviewing the highlights.
The cellular industry now claims 4 billion people on the planet are connected wirelessly. But the trillion dollar industry cannot avoid the global economic crisis. IDC recently reported that handset sales were down some 12.6 percent in the 4th quarter of 2008. Strategy Analytics predicted last month that the global mobile phone market would shrink 9% in 2009.
Here are some handset and mobile software highlights from Nokia, Samsung, Microsoft, Sony Ericsson, HTC and Huawei:
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Nokia announcements include its E75 phone, which has a slide-out full keyboard and will go on sale for 390 pounds (about $565) in Britain next month. Nokia’s own app store, called OVI, will be a one-stop shop. Content providers can upload their apps and games here. Electronic Arts has already signed up. Nokia says the Ovi Store is set to go live to consumers in May. It will offer targeted media through their social connections and their physical location. Nokia’s Ovi database went belly up a few days ago, taking 3 weeks of user data with it. No backup. Sorry about that.
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Microsoft took the wraps off their new mobile OS, Windows Mobile 6.5 (press releases).
Windows Mobile 6.5 will have improvements to the user experience, including a greater emphasis on touch controls; “dramatically better” mobile Web browsing; expanded music, video and other consumer-oriented capabilities. It will be on the LG-GM7300 and HTC’s Touch Diamond 2 and Touch Pro 2 which will be upgradeable to Windows Mobile 6.5. Version 7 is set to come in 2010. Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer introduced an app store called My Phone that allows people to sync their photos, contacts, videos and other files to a personalized website they can access from anywhere.
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Samsung Electronics unveiled the Memoir, which has an 8-megapixel camera and the endorsement of Danish model-photographer Helena Christensen. The world’s second-largest cellphone maker said it will sell more than three phones using Google’s Android software by the end of the year and would “definitely” unveil a phone using LiMo’s Linux software this year. Samsung and LG are expected to show handsets that can be recharged by sunlight. Expect too the new browser from Opera, which is trying to make mobile Web surfing faster.
- Sony Ericsson announced 8- and 12-megapixel cameraphones and a new corporate mission: making it easy to create and share experiences within your device and across mobile networks. The Idou is a 12.1-megapixel cameraphone running the new open Symbian Foundation OS. It has a 3.5-inch, 16:9 ratio 640×480 resistive touch screen, music and video players. The Sony Ericsson W995 Walkman phone is an 8-megapixel sliding cameraphone with an additional sliding-lens cover for its camera.
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With the HTC Touch Diamond2 and HTC Touch Pro2, HTC is introducing a new people-centric communication approach, providing a single contact view that displays the individual conversation history of contacts regardless of whether voice, text or email were used. The next Android phone from HTC (after T-Mobile’s G1), is the G2, and is expected to be picked up by Vodaphone. HTC said it would NOT be introducing any new Android smartphones at the show. Samsung, HTC and Sony Ericsson have all decided not to show their new Android phones at MWC.
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Huawei Technologies showcased its first Android-powered smart phone. It will be commercially available from the third quarter of 2009. Huawei is also readying a phone for late this year or early next year that operates on LTE. AT&T and Verizon Wireless have each announced that they plan to use LTE to build their next-generation wireless networks. China-based Huawei — which sells phones to telecom operators — aims to sell 40-45 million phones in 2009, compared with 33 million last year. Huawei expects smart phones to be 24 percent of the global market by 2011 and 30 percent by 2012.
- LG says the first handset it releases running Google’s Android OS will be their KS360. It’ll launch this summer. The specs will stay the same as the existing KS360, but it will have the open source operating system used on T-Mobile’s G1, so will be open to a host of user-designed apps. The KS360 handset features a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and 2.0-megapixel camera. LG will also release another two Android phones this year, Marketing Manager Jeremy Newing told T3, following the KS360 Android this summer.
- Smartphones with Flash Player 10 running on Android, Windows Mobile and Nokia’s Symbian S60 platforms should be on the market next year. Adobe is still working with Apple on an iPhone version. Adobe has already shipped its pared-down Flash Lite video player in almost 1 billion mobile phones.Their Open Screen Project will help deliver Adobe Flash Player for smartphones on the new Palm webOS platform. Adobe also announced a new version of its Flash Lite 3.1 Distributable Player, a mobile runtime that enables developers to create Flash apps without needing to worry what versions are running on users’ handsets.
- Quattro Wireless, a Waltham, Mass., company, is announcing an ad network for cellphones. U.S. software firm Amdocs, which provides software and services for wireless operators, is planning a “white label” application store that will allow carriers to offer their own brand. Nokia and Microsoft are readying their own application “stores,”.
Apple, which launched its first iPhone a little more than two years ago, has largely stolen the show without even being there.
According to research firm Canalys, the iPhone accounted for 17.3 percent of worldwide smartphone shipments in the third quarter, surpassing Microsoft, which had 13.6 percent. The mobile-operating-system market leader in the third quarter was Symbian, with 46.6 percent.
ABI Research predicted that mobile devices will place an ever-increasing demand on 3G networks that can be addressed only by 4G networks, either Mobile WiMAX or LTE.
The smartphone battle between iPhone, Android, Open Symbian, LiMO, RIM and Windows Mobile promises good outcomes for consumers with lower prices and more features.
Related Dailywireless articles include; Mobile World Congress: HSPA, WiMAX & LTE Faceoff, Nvidia: Turbo Boost for Android and WinMobile, Netbooks Embed Broadband, The 8 Megapixel Phone, Handsets: Open, Open, Open, Cisco Beamforms Russia & Kazakhstan, TeleNav Does Turn-By-Turn on Android and 2009 Mobile World Congress.
