Barcelona, Spain
February 27 - March 1, 2012
SmartSync, which has been doing good business on the iPhone app store [itunes link], has released an updated version that is a big improvement on the original app, which has become popular because it makes you sound like some sort of omnipresent god. No, I got that wrong. Let’s try that again. It’s like having a CRM for your friends. When someone calls you, SmartSync displays their latest Facebook statuses or photos against the call. Say they said they were tired. When they call you you say “Wow, sorry to hear you’re feeling tired!” even before they’ve said hello. See, suddenly you’re all-knowing.
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As 60,000 people flooded Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, multiple bars and restaurants were suddenly hit by wave after wave of men (it’s mostly men) in blue and grey suits. The suits at MWC are there to do one thing. Sell mobile base stations to each other, get carrier partnerships for their new Latin American MVNO (or similar), and generally be those mobile corporate drones that flood the Fira conference centre annually. This year some companies have gone all out with their trade stands – Alcatel’s looks like a cross between MacDonalds and a scene from Logans Run. The irony that socialist troops paraded on the same ground during the 1930s is lost on most. But amid all this razzmatazz and hype about the future of mobile, one can’t help wondering: Has Mobile World Congress outlived its usefulness?
The signs are there. Carriers are losing their position as the centre of gravity in mobile. It used to be the case the that big stories were about Verizon/AT&T/Vodafone/Whichever signing some big deal. That’s no longer the case. Today it’s all about software and handset operating systems like Windows Phone and Android (Apple never exhibits, but now and again you can spot their executives wandering around).
These days the conversation around mobile is all about apps and platforms. Angry Birds launching on a handset or tablet is the news, not some carrier deal. → Read More
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Way back in the days of Android yore, the stock browser got the job done but did so with a minimum of flair. Now there’s no shortage of first-rate mobile browsers out there, but mobile browser war mainstay Dolphin has just released a new update that packs an equally new (and nifty) feature: it’s called Sonar, and it lets you navigate the web with your voice.
Once the update is installed, a small button will appear in the bottom left corner of the screen. Long-pressing that button allows users to select between drawing Dolphin’s navigation gestures on screen and using Sonar to speak their commands aloud. One more quick press and users can start yapping away with Dolphin’s voice commands. → Read More
Tired of just hearing about Windows 8 all the time? Well then, you’re in luck — Microsoft has finally released the Windows 8 Consumer Preview to the public, so people outside of the tech bubble finally have the chance to take Redmond’s new OS for a spin. → Read More
Accessibility has become quite the theme here at Mobile World Congress: Nokia and ZTE have announced new low-cost devices to bring push Windows Phone into developing markets, and Google chairman Eric Schmidt highlighted the importance of connecting all people.
Sweden-based Doro is trying to help in their own way — the company has recently pulled back the curtain on the PhoneEasy 740, an Android-powered smartphone meant to help the older folks in your life stay connected.
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We’ve been trawling Barcelona for apps and startups during Mobile World Congress, so here’s a little round-up of some of those that have been plying their wares – many of whom don’t have the cash to exhibit at the official Congress, but who are pitching like mad in the hotel bars of Barcelona.
BearCare from Tagofjoy is an Augmented Reality game with a freemium business model. In the game you have to protect your beloved helpless Teddy Bear and cuddle him to keep him happy (go with it, it gets better). The fun part is that it takes place in a real environment, which is blended with lively and playful 3D bears. The games ha two modes. One is a fast-paced action game, in which you have to protect your helpless bear from unearthly, evil toy bears. Another mode lets you take care of him and keep him happy by cuddling him, playing with him and feeding him when he gets hungry. It’s a Tamagotchi basically, but re-done for a new world.
PlayTales is a an interesting virtual store and publishing platform. It publishes interactive children’s ebooks in 7 languages on Android, iPad, iPhone, Windows Phone and soon a flash web site. It’s basically a dream come true for parents who want to read stories to their kids on an iPad.
Mafuta Go! is a one from left field for you. Coming out of Uganda, this is an app that lets users find the nearest gas station with the cheapest prices. Should you need that.
It’s worth also pointing out that Swiftkey, which we’ve covered before, won the official GMA award for most innovative app, beating Google Wallet.
Here’s a few others: → Read More
The number of people in the world has now reached 7 billion people, but the number that have been online are only at 2 billion, Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, said today at a keynote presentation at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
“We need to be realists about technology,” he said. The future, most easily, belongs to “ultra connected people” who can embrace the future of technology, but the majority of people do not fall into that category, he said as he kicked off a speech about what he sees as the role of technology in the world today, and carefully suggested what role Google could play in the game. → Read More
iZettle, the Swedish mobile payments startup that basically competes with Square, has gone live on the App store in the Nordic markets today (Denmark, Norway and Finland). It’s making 5,000 card reader devices available in each country. They’ve also appointed a UK managing director, Stewart Roberts. Stewart was former Director of Global Innovation at Barclaycard. A launch in the UK is therefore all but confirmed.
Unlike square, iZettle’s card reader is a chip and pin, which makes it more secure than Square. However it doesn’t have quite the same advantages, as its reader uses Apple’s proprietary connector so it has to pay Apple for the license on that.
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After hearing that Huawei had revealed “the world’s fastest smartphone” in the form of the Ascend D Quad, we knew we had to seek it out. Well, we finally managed to score a little hands-on time with the Chinese company’s newest device, and we didn’t come away disappointed.
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It was over a year ago that Nokia and Microsoft announced their partnership to make Windows Phone the primary operating system for Nokia’s smartphones. But the real test in the consumer market starts now, the first full year of Nokia selling its new handsets, with a portfolio of four models shipping in a range of markets, including China.
Stephen Elop, the CEO of Nokia, is all too aware of the challenge ahead. Although his company is still the world’s biggest handset maker, its leadership is now much more narrow, at 23 percent, according to Gartner. And its fightback strategy on Windows Phone is effectively starting from scratch: Windows Phone accounted for only 1.9 percent of smartphones sold in Q4 2011, a decline on the 3.4 percent it took in the same quarter in 2010.
We got a chance to sit down with Elop earlier today, in a meeting room at the top of Nokia’s ginormous MWC stand, to talk about some of the challenges and opportunities the company is facing up ahead, and how its news this week will play into that: → Read More
The Padfone is a peculiar beast, to be sure. Given the right accessories (and enough money, I suppose), Asus’s newest smartphones can easily transform into a tablet and a faux-notebook in the blink of an eye, but how well does the thing work? Asus was kind enough to let us play with one for a short while in their booth here at Mobile World Congress, and we’ve put together a quick video for your viewing pleasure.
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Viacom’s MTV is making one more move into trying to capture the youth market on the platform where it’s increasingly spending most of its time: the company, in partnership with digital agency AKQA, has launched “Under The Thumb,” a new social TV app.
MTV and Viacom are calling this a “world first” in that it will let users watch MTV content on the mobile, share it on the go with others, and then watch the program simultaneously with those friends. It builds on a pretty extensive business that MTV has already established in Europe, including its own mobile service. → Read More
Mobile browser company Opera — which claims to be the world’s largest, with 160 million monthly users — today announced two more developments in its drive to make more money from mobile: today it is launching its own payment exchange for its Mobile Store app store; and it has named its first regional partner for the service, Yandex, which will become the preferred method of payment in Russia and the CIS.
The news is the latest in a week of mobile money and payment announcements — including the news that Facebook will also offer carrier billing for mobile users of its apps. → Read More
My first reaction upon hearing about Nokia’s 41-megapixel 808 Pureview was that it was an absurdity, a perfect example of the very worst of consumer electronics, and a total miss. But the more I read, the better I understood that this phone isn’t just some freak of nature with a ridiculously high number attached to it. It’s just the slightly awkward first steps of a serious move by Nokia to differentiate itself.
If you’ve only skimmed the news, there are some things you should probably know about this strange beast of a camera.
First, the 41 megapixel figure is really misrepresentative, not to say untrue. It doesn’t take 41-megapixel photos in any way, shape, or form. Even in the special high-res creative mode, it “only” produces 38 megapixels. Mostly it will be taking normal-size shots, between 3 and 8 megapixels. So what the hell does this 41 megapixel figure even mean? → Read More
Wow. We expected a lot of news out of Mobile World Congress but who knew HTC would have so. freaking. much.
I was having trouble keeping track of it myself, so for the good of the both of us, I thought it might be fitting to bundle all this news up into something a tad more easily digestible.
And off we go… → Read More
Only yesterday we reported that Evi, a new iPhone (iTunes link) and Android app (link) which was incredibly Siri-like – and some say it’s better – had gotten a call from Apple that it was about to be pulled from the App store. Why? For being – as far as we could figure out – too much like Siri, and maybe, well, just too good.
Today, the buzz at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is that Apple has climbed down from that position, and in particular as a result of our story.
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It’s not nice to knock a company when it’s down, but I had a briefing earlier today in Barcelona with Alec Saunders, the head of developer relations at RIM, which — depending on whether you support RIM or not — either speaks to the company’s new, original attack on the market, or a sign of why it won’t succeed.
The bottom line is that RIM, in a way, seems to think that size doesn’t matter these days. → Read More
Facebook, currently in a quiet period as it prepares for its IPO, is stone-cold silent on whether it really will ever launch a mobile device, and whether it plans to launch mobile advertising to complement its main revenue driver on desktops.
But that does not mean it is sitting still on mobile — the company’s biggest area of growth at the moment.
In an interview today in Barcelona with TechCrunch, Facebook’s CTO, Bret Taylor, described how the social network is taking privacy seriously on mobile, an incendiary issue that only yesterday got flamed once again, and also about how developers were behind its move toward carrier billing. → Read More
At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Visa announced a new over-the-air provisioning service for smartphones for use with Visa’s payWave mobile payments system. The service will make it easier for operators, banks and even transit operators to link Visa payment accounts to consumers’ smartphones, the company says.
Although perhaps not as exciting as news of a mobile wallet “app” in consumers’ eyes, what Visa is revealing is a key part to the underlying infrastructure that can make NFC-based mobile payments a reality.
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Nokia’s announcement of the Symbian Belle-powered 808 PureView and its 41-megapixel camera took many (including me) by surprise this morning, and there were more than a few demo photos being thrown up during the presentation.
I got the chance to play with the 808 earlier this morning, but the inside of the Fira Montjuic’s Hall 5 didn’t provide the best vistas to photograph (I really wish I could’ve smuggled one outside, as Barcelona’s architecture is beautiful). Nokia has come through a handful of impressive sample shots though, and while your mileage may vary, they’re a stunning testament to the 808′s downright crazy camera. → Read More
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