Barcelona, Spain | February 24 - 28, 2013
Finnish startup Jolla is open for business. That’s the message CEO Marc Dillon was putting out, loud and clear, during two on stage appearances at the Mobile World Congress tradeshow in Barcelona last week. Not a bad amount of stage time for a first time MWC attendee and a mobile upstart that hasn’t sold a single handset yet because it’s still busy making its first phone. → Read More
NFC has always struck me as one of those things that everyone says is going to get really big next year, and the growing number of smartphones and tablets that come bearing support for the standard is proof that at least a few people care about it. But what if you want to experience the NFC lifestyle but your gadget(s) of choice don’t play nice with it? Enter Spain-based Sistel Networks, and its… → Read More
For better or worse, the advent of smartphones and tablets mean that we’re rapidly moving away from the more tactile user experiences that were the hallmark of a bygone era in computing. As it turns out, the folks at Fujitsu are eager to close the book on the days of the physical keyboard if what they were showing off here at MWC was any indication.
Tucked away in a corner of Fujitsu’s… → Read More
Google has yet to release the Mirror API that will open Google Glass as a platform, but developers of some of the more popular mobile apps today are gearing up for when it will. Today, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Dennis Crowley, CEO of social location app Foursquare, highlighted Google’s new headgear as an example of how mobile screens are evolving. Later, he told TechCrunch that… → Read More
Just as some people are put on this earth to create things, others are prone to destroy everything they touch. Those people should probably spend some time with the Caterpillar-branded CAT B15, an aluminum-and-rubber-clad Android smartphone that (inadvertently) encouraged people to work on their stress issues here at MWC. → Read More
It takes a lot to stand out at a trade show the size of Mobile World Congress. But here’s one device that caught my eye today: an e-ink smartphone. Unlike Yota Phone, the Russian startup that’s using e-ink as a second screen to augment the back of a powerful high end smartphone in a bid to stand out in the uber crowded Android space, this prototype device has just the one screen. A… → Read More
Earlier this week, Mozilla made a splash at the start of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona with the official launch of the first phones to be made on its new Firefox OS smartphone platform, and the names of 18 carriers and several handset makers that were getting behind the business. Now more details are emerging about other partners in the process: among them, it looks like Mozilla has… → Read More
Drew Houston, the CEO of Dropbox, said that staying independent was a key part of Dropbox’s strategy; and with mobile being the most important platform for picking up new users, Dropbox was looking for more handset makers and carriers for partnerships along the lines of the one it has with Samsung, as he described his cloud storage company as being in its “Apple 2 phase.” → Read More
After Sony released a string of curious Android tablets that failed to catch on, the company had no choice but to go back to the drawing table and try something different. That something different wound up being the Xperia Tablet Z, easily one of its most conventional designs yet — a choice that may end up paying off nicely. Now that the decidedly non-kooky Xperia Tablet Z is gearing up for an… → Read More
All the mobile OS underdogs are coming out to play at this year’s Mobile World Congress, rushing in to fill the void left by Google’s lack of any Android marketing mania. Now it’s Tizen’s turn. At an event in Barcelona this evening Samsung-backed Tizen has officially launched Tizen 2.0, according to Engadget, showing off a developer handset running version 2.0 of the platform. → Read More
Web browser company Opera Software, now 300 million users strong, caught the world off guard the other week when it announced that it would be ditching its own Presto framework and moving instead to Google’s WebKit to power its mobile and desktop browsers. In an interview with TechCrunch today, Opera’s CEO Lars Boilesen said that the decision has freed up the company to innovate in a way that it… → Read More
Switftkey — the intuitive typing interface for smartphones which has made its way into some Android phones and is reputedly behind the new BlackBerry touchscreen keyboard (though the company declines to comment or confirm) — is edging closer to the iOS platform. Today it announced exclusively with TechCrunch at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, that it is launching an iPad typing app aimed… → Read More
ZTE’s press conference yesterday didn’t really reveal anything we didn’t already know, but it at least gave us the opportunity to play with the Chinese OEM’s first Firefox OS-powered smartphone. The cost-conscious Open is apparently meant for “young people who are adventurers and want to try something new” (according to He Shiyou, head of ZTE’s Mobile Devices Division anyway), but how is it? → Read More
Messaging startup Viber, which lets users of most smartphone platforms send free texts, calls and messages via its app, is continuing to ramp up its user-base. Speaking at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona today, CEO Talmon Marco announced the startup now has 175 million users. Viber has been around since early 2011, but growing rapidly in the past 12 months. In December it… → Read More
ZTE has just introduced the Grand Memo flagship smartphone at MWC in Barcelona. The Grand Memo has top-shelf specs including a 5.7-inch 720×1280 TFT display, a quad-core Qualcomm 800 processor, a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and a front-facing camera for video chat.
ZTE is marketing this as its phablet experience, as competitors like Huawei, Samsung, and most recently Asus bet big on… → Read More
Visa is swiftly moving ahead announcing its first partners for its new NFC initiative and push into the wider world of mobile payments — two programs it announced a few days ago that come with a set of APIs to let third parties integrate the credit card giant’s payment services more seamlessly into their own. Visa has named Samsung as its first global NFC partner, and dongle maker… → Read More
The last time I bought an LG smartphone — the unabashedly brown G2x — I had to return it after a few weeks because it would randomly reboot if I so much as looked at it funny. From then on, I convinced myself that I just couldn’t buy another LG phone. They just weren’t worth the headache.
After playing with LG’s Optimus G Pro here at MWC, I’m starting to rethink that decision. → Read More
Opera just announced that it would spin off its advertising business into a brand new entity called Opera Mediaworks. Fully owned by Opera, the new subsidiary will consolidate under one roof multiple recent acquisitions, such as Mobile Theory, 4th screen or Admarvel. The Norwegian-based company claims that the new entity is now the world’s largest mobile ad network. → Read More
Troubled operating system webOS isn’t defunct yet. According to CNET, LG just acquired software, licenses and the team working on webOS from HP. LG plans to implement it in its smart TVs — not in its phones. In yet another surprising event, Palm’s OS will experience a third (or fourth) life. → Read More
Remember “mobile TV”, whatever that was? No we don’t either, but that’s not about to deter new startup Vinson which is launching their their new mobile OTT (Over The Top) TV app on iOS for broadcasters, content aggregators and content distributors at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Essentially this is watching live TV on a tablet, with the full TV guide, plus PVR/time-shifting, plus “social”… → Read More
Sony Mobile Communications chief Kunimasa Suzuki took the stage to deliver something of a state of the mobile union address at MWC early this morning, and took a very brief detour to talk availability for one of Sony’s most promising products. As expected, there was no mention of any new hardware during Suzuki’s address (sorry Xperia SP hopefuls), but he did confirm that the company’s Xperia… → Read More
Ahead of its Mobile World Congress press conference today, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop sat down with TechCrunch to talk about the company’s dual OS strategy, expanding product portfolio and the evolving competitive landscape of smartphones and smart devices. → Read More
Google, sans a big Android stand but with the largest global smartphone share for its mobile platform, may not be making as much news as in year’s past at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, but Yandex, the search and cloud/mobile apps company often called the “Google of Russia,” is. Today the company released Yandex.Store, an alternative, customizable, native app store for Android devices… → Read More
Nokia is taking one more step to push its mapping and devices services as a standalone business. Today, the company announced during the handset maker’s press conference at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that it would be rebranding all of its Nokia-branded mapping and navigation services as “HERE” going forward. → Read More
Nokia has announced two new Lumia smartphones at its Mobile World Congress press conference – broadening its Windows Phone 8 portfolio to five devices and filling in some of the pricing gaps in the mid and lower end of the range. The two 3G newcomers to the Lumia line are the mid-range Lumia 720 and the new entry level 520, which will cost $180 before taxes. → Read More
It was just this past May that MasterCard expanded its stake in the digital payments arena with its PayPass Wallet Services, and it’s already getting a bit of an overhaul. Today, MasterCard has announced that PayPass Wallet Services is graduating from its production trial with a new name — MasterPass — and a slightly broader approach to how it aims to improve users’ shopping experiences. → Read More
Flash back a month or so to CES — NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang officially pulled back the curtain on the company’s new Tegra 4 chipset, and called it the “world’s fastest mobile processor.” It was a hell of a claim to make, but the company did little to justify it at the time aside from pointing to its array of Cortex A15 CPU cores and its “72 GPU cores.”
Fortunately, NVIDIA is much chattier here… → Read More
HP surprised more than a few people earlier tonight when it officially revealed the Slate 7, a $169 Android tablet that’s set to ship in the U.S. for $169 in April. It struck me as a safe move for HP, especially after it whiffed so profoundly with its ill-fated TouchPad. After all, people are buying plenty of Nexus 7s, so clearly there must be a market for a cheap, small tablet.
I got the… → Read More
Firefox OS, the new, HTML5-friendly mobile OS from Mozilla, is today taking a big step forward in its strategy to become a viable third player in the smartphone landscape currently dominated by Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS. Mozilla is announcing that 18 carriers have now committed to its Open Web HTML5 device push; the launch of the Firefox Marketplace app store to aggregate content for the… → Read More
Chinese mobile maker Huawei has confirmed a new addition to its Android family: the Ascend P2. The P2 is the sequel to last year’s relatively mid-range P1 but puts more power under the hood — with a quad-core 1.5GHz chip — and pairs that power with a more modestly sized screen (4.7 inches) than the pair of phablets Huawei unboxed at CES. → Read More
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