What´s new in mobiles?

Want a "life partner to hold"? To play the music you like and give you a "rousing climax"? To touch? This is what Samsung promised for its mobiles at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

But before you start wondering why your current mobile is underperforming in this area, the "life partner" is a phone that will help you blog or record the important aspects of your life in photos, thoughts, schedules and texts.

And that "rousing climax", that´s how music sounds when you listen to the Bang & Olufson improved sound quality on some of its mobiles, claims Samsung, the Taiwanese company.

"With 11 new phones, Samsung is also aiming to attack some of the lower tier markets, but the focus at the moment remains mid to high tier," says Richard Windsor, communications hardware analyst at brokers Nomura. "This makes sense as Motorola continues to languish, making it much easier for Samsung to reach its goal of 16% market share."

Samsung´s stainless steel flagship phone called Soul, has a 5 megapixel camera with stabiliser, fast data speeds, amplifier by B&O and is 12.9mm thin.
"It´s not only beautiful, it has the full range of functions," says Samsung´s Yong Ho Shin, who is clearly in love.

Judging by the amount of footfall on its stand, Nokia, the Finnish handset giant, also has a major hit on its hands with the N96, essentially a tiny computer that is the next step on from its existing N95. Its stand was the busiest of the handset makers on the first day of the show.

All four of Nokia´s new phones running the Symbian operating system "incorporate assisted-GPS powered navigation, imaging and music functions but only the N96 is optimised to do them all at an optimum level of performance," says Windsor.

But the overriding trend in new handsets was touch, touch and more touch. Or in mobile jargon: touchscreens. This trend shows just how much Apple´s touch-operated iPhone has influenced mobile phone design.

LG really emphasised ease of use at its press conference and in its products. Its top-of-the-range LG-KF700 has a choice of three different types of control: pictures you press or browse through with a finger; a dial at the side of the phone you can scroll with a thumb; or a keypad.

This gives the user real choice about how to operate the phone and in its shiny chrome-look casing, is right on trend. LG also demonstrated a prototype of a watch phone but was reluctant to give details on a release date.

And of course, its marketing features the word ´touch´ again as in "Smartly touchable, more usable." But despite the hype, life partners in the traditional sense do not yet come packaged into a phone.

Juan Manuel Soriano of OpenBox New Media (c)Joia Shillingford


Quotes of the Mobile World Congress

We see touchscreens as a growing trend in the mobile industry..”
Dr Skott Ahn, president and chief executive, Mobile Communications, LG Electronics, 1:30pm Monday 11 February, first day of the show.

“One of the next big things is the move to mobile broadband”
Pat Russo, chief executive of Alcatel-Lucent, 12 noon, Tuesday 12 February, announcing an R&D joint venture with NEC of Japan on Long Term Evolution/4G technology.

“When it comes to market competition, we will cut each others’ throats nicely”
Hamid Akhavan, chief executive of T-Mobile, 6:30pm on Wednesday 13 February, stating that the the Next Generation Mobile Networks alliance on LTE standards won't remove competition.

“How was last night’s party?”
Unknown MWC visitor on his mobile, 11:25am, Thursday 14 February.

“I’m too tired for sex”
Juan Manuel Soriano, product manager of mobile games company OpenBox New Media, 6:30pm on Thursday 14 February, the last day of the show.

Mobile fest sees touch screens, faster broadband dominate

More than 55,000 visitors (including delegates and exhibitors) attended the Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona, according to its organisers the GSM Association. The three-day conference featured more than 230 chief executives and other high-level speakers.

Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone, filmmaker Robert Redford, Wang Jianzhou, CEO of China Mobile, John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO of Nokia, Black-Eyed-Peas´ singer will.i.am and actress Isabella Rossellini were among the speakers at the Congress.

Surprisingly, since it was three years since the Congress was last in Cannes, many visitors were still wistful about attending the show there, where it was on a smaller scale, with more ad hoc networking.

Sadly the Catalonian crime wave continued unabated, with many reports of thefts in downtown Barcelona. This was despite the police asking visitors to take off their show passes as they got on to the metro.

One O2 employee described the police as very well organised with an English to Spanish translator on hand to help victims of crime – he had his wallet stolen – to report the thefts. And a consultant trying to get on to the metro found that as he tried to board the train two girls already on it, blocked his path.

Meanwhile a thief on the platform reached for his wallet. He managed to fend him off but another delegate reported a colleague´s wallet being stolen on the metro from his front trouser pocket while he was with two co-workers. Not one of the three saw it happen.

Observing, analysing and reporting on the Congress were 2,700 international print, Web and broadcast media. This year the press office was sponsored by Huawei and it was well equipped for about the first time ever.

The Congress also hosted 1,300 exhibitors across 1,500 stands with approximately 29,000 square metres of exhibition space and 30,000 of square metres of hospitality space, reflecting the fact that people come to the show to schmooze as well as do deals and announce them.

This year, the mobile entertainment hall (Hall 7) was busy and buzzy, unlike last year when it was a lot quieter reflecting the fact that as more of the world´s mobile users get 3G (or 3G plus HSPA) for higher data speeds, content is really starting to take off.

Next Generation Mobile Networks
Key themes of the Congress were that touch screens have gained real momentum as established handset makers seek to keep up with Apple´s iPhone and that lots of companies are investing in LTE (Long Term Evolution) based technologies to provide the high-speed mobile broadband successor to 3G, though some will introduce Mobile Wi-Max (like faster Wi-Fi for cities) beforehand.

Alcatel-Lucent boss Patricia Russo co-announced an agreement to combine its LTE R&D efforts with those of NEC of Japan to come up with a common platform. The motive: to increase speed to market by pooling resources.

Further evidence that the pace of change is speeding up in the industry was evident at a meeting of industry alliance Next Generation Mobile Networks. Its members are major industry players determined to get LTE - essentially really fast mobile broadband of up to 100 megabits a second off the ground faster than the usual standards body process could.

T-Mobile´s pavilion at the show saw a top table including: Dr Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm; Hamid Akhavan, chief executive of T-Mobile and chair of the NGMN; Dr Horst Lennertz of E-Plus´ supervisory board; and the CTOs of Telstra and Ericsson among others all in one room for an hour.

“The record attendance figures at this year’s Congress reflect both the extraordinary and compelling conference programme, which covered a broad range of topics from Long-Term Evolution to made-for-mobile short films to the environment, and the high quality of the exhibition,” said John Hoffman, CEO of the GSMA’s conference division.

“We are also delighted by the seniority of the people that have traveled from all over the world to Barcelona for the Congress - more than 43% of conference attendees hold C-level (Chief Executive Office, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Operations Officer or Chief Financial Officer) positions within their organisations.”

The event was sponsored by a number of companies, including LG and Telefonica. The EC´s Viviane Reding also caused a bit of a stir as she highlighted the need for lower data roaming charges, with a number of operators, including O2 and 3, announcing lower roaming charges ahead of any EC decision: 3 UK in the week before the show and 02 in January.