Barcelona mobile show hit by crime wave

Peter Gardner, sector partner for communications at venture capital firm 3i, had his wallet stolen in between getting out of his taxi and walking up the steps to register at the 3GSM World Congress, the world’s biggest mobile show. He was one of many victims of crime during the four-day show, which transferred from Cannes to Barcelona last week, drawing a record 50,000 visitors.

But Mr Gardner consoled himself with the thought that his loss must surely be some sort of record. The distance from taxi drop off to registration desk is less than 10 yards.

However, two visitors getting out of a cab outside the exhibition hall on the first morning of the show warned me against carrying my handbag around as they had already been mugged.

Mr Gardner later learned that a fellow delegate and his wife had beaten his record by “losing” one of their passports between getting off the plane and going through passport control. Another delegate said he had been set up by a friendly passenger who had travelled on the same plane as him and then offered to look after his bags at the taxi rank.

Two female staff from Sonim, a company in 3i’s portfolio that specialises in software to give mobiles walkie talkie like functions, known as push-to-talk, had money stolen. One of them was having dinner with three colleagues and had her handbag wound round her ankle, but still a thief managed to prise her wallet out without anyone noticing.

The other had the strap of her handbag cut. So when she reached down to get it, it was no longer there. Margaret Rice-Jones, a corporate vice president at US mobile company Motorola, said she’d heard that companies were losing laptop computers from meeting rooms.

Thieves also stole mobiles from Finnish mobile-phone company Nokia’s stand by cutting through the wires that bound them to the display stands, according to Mr Gardner. Other mobiles disappeared from the front pockets of people’s bags.

Some locals said the show had been targeted by east European gangs – but expatriates living in Barcelona said thefts of mobiles and wallets are rife in the city.

In fact, a second attempt was made to fleece Mr Gardner. This time he was prepared. “I think the flower seller who tried to pick my pocket was a bit surprised by the ferocity with which I responded,” he said.

Nevertheless 3i feels the show was good for business. It had hired a boat, the Mystic W, to entertain the wireless companies in its portfolio and key industry players, and got a very good turn out for its drinks parties.

“It was a bit of a risk for us as we knew the boat would be away from the show,” said Mr Gardner. “But taking an exhibition stand is just not 3i’s style.”

One of 3i’s companies, SpinVox, which converts mobile voicemails into text messages, won the Mobile Innovation Forum award at the GSM Association Awards dinner. Traffic jams in Barcelona held up her arrival as delegates’ heavy taxi use slowed traffic – but that’s another story.

Numbers up, networking down

Fifty thousand people attended Europe’s annual mobilefest, 3GSM 2006, which ended on 16 February.

So says the GSM Association (GSMA), which organises the event, with its partner Informa.

As a result, the GSMA is viewing the event’s move to Barcelona as a success. It is billing the show the biggest mobile show on earth.

The event had been held in Cannes, France, for the last 12 years. In February 2005 it drew 34,000 visitors to the south of France. This year’s day one attendance at the show on 13 February was larger than last year’s figure for the whole show.

Exhibitor numbers were also up, with 962 companies exhibiting.

Cannes did not work hard enough to expand the exhibition facilities available or to improve service from hotels and taxis.

But in many ways the show has lost something. It used to be very democratic, in that wherever you went in Cannes day or night, you would meet people at the show and get to know them in an informal setting.

Now many of the events are off site, which means they tend to be by invitation only. This must make it much harder for the smaller companies to accidentally meet important high-level contacts, just because they are in the same bar.

The logistics have also been a bit of a nightmare with little information on where off-site hotels and other venues are.

Taxis can be hard to find and taxi queues outside the exhibition centre were often 100 yards long – or longer.

There were also queues for the ladies loos and journey times were unpredictable because of heavy traffic.

This meant much of the time that could have been spent networking was spent in cabs. For press, the facilities were appalling. PCs - or Ethernet connections for people prepared to lug laptops around a large show - were enough for about 10% of the 1,400 journalists expected to attend.

In the end 1,900 turned up. Many found that when trying to connect to their internet email to check a venue address or meeting time, they could not even get on to a PC. Because they were all taken.

A surprisingly high number of delegates also reported thefts of bags, mobile devices or laptops from meeting rooms.

As last year – the press office closed at the unfashionably early time of 4pm. No wonder the GSM Association is taking more control of the event from UK-listed Informa.

In a new three year contract between the GSM Association and Informa, the GSMA will handle more of the sales and marketing of exhibition stands and increase its role in organising the keynote and other speeches.

Highlights

For me the highlights of the show, were the Motorola press conference and a Women in telecoms breakfast organized by Margaret Rice-Jones, a senior manager at the same company.

Nokia was also upbeat about the future and Jorma Ollila, the company’s CEO, seemed in high spirits at the company’s press conference and genuinely touched to receive the chairman’s award at the Hollywood-style GSM Awards.

This contrasted with a rather brusque acceptance speech from Vodafone when winning one of the awards.

Magazines on your mobile

New technology from London-based Refresh Mobile makes it easy for magazine publishers - or other businesses wishing to promote their brands - to publish mini magazines on mobile phones.

Called Mobizines, each mobile mag can have four sections with up to five stories in each.

People wanting to subscribe to a mobizine send a text message requesting it. For example, to get the Time Out one, text 63333 and follow the instructions to download.

The mini mags are free, apart from whatever the customer's mobile operator charges for downloading data. The idea is that they will be supported by advertising.

Because the mags are quite compact, the data charge is just a few pence, according to Elaine Devereux of Refresh.

New issues of each mobizine get downloaded automatically when the next edition is published.

Refresh Mobile was a management buy-out from Deutsche Telekom-owned mobile operator T-Mobile and was founded by two members of its global management team. It hopes to make money from a one-off charge for its technology plus a share of advertising/transaction revenues.

Conde Nast (Glamour, GQ), OK!, ITV and others are offering the mobile mags.
http://www.mobizines.com

Perkier photos

Five mega-pixel photos are coming to mobile phones, according to US-based processor maker Zoran.

The company will introduce its APPROACH 5C, with technology that allows camera phones to take 5 mega-pixel pictures, at 3GSM 2006 in Barcelona later this month. This provides "the same quality photographers find in Japanese branded 5 mega-pixel digital cameras," the company says.

Many of today's current camera phones take a 1.3 mega-pixel picture, though some offer higher resolution.
www.zoran.com