MWC 2010 Recap

As in the past 4-5 years I've attended the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. I must say that being a veteran attendee it is starting to get a bit old and also a bit sad to see the show shrinking a bit every year, but still I did manage to see some interesting stuff that are worth mentioning, so here goes:

Missing but yet present: Nokia

Nokia's decision not to present inside MWC was definitely a blow to the GSMA. But still though it didn't pay the $$$ to the GSMA to be inside the show, it had its own side event a few steps away from the Fira (MWC's venue). So still even for those wanting to meet Nokia, coming to Barcelona in that time a year is still worthwhile which of course works in the best interest of MWC. Nokia's strategy was to create a more targeted side invite-only event, which they hoped would be more productive than the buzz and noise inside the show halls. It will be interesting to see if they repeat that strategy next year and if any other big players will follow.

Saddest Hall: Hall 2.1

And very related to Nokia's decision, the show was simply smaller this year both in terms of visitors and in terms of booth space. Last year some halls were already a bit thinner than in previous years, but this time, aside from most halls being less dense, the second floor of hall 2 almost completely disappeared. There were only 2 booths there and the media center and that's it. In the good times it was filled with booths all over. The good news is that I noticed more advertising on the streets, metro stations and next to the Fira, way more than the previous year. So guess we'll have to wait till next year to see if there's a trend here or just a minor setback.

Best Booth Babes: CBOSS

Well, there's really no competition here... The CBOSS girls simply give the best show of MWC year after year... Definitely the show stopper of hall 1 in which you can see quite an audience every time these lovely girls make an appearance. On the other hand, other companies failed to deliver on the oldest trick in the show marketing book and it was kinda dry elsewhere... I can only say MWC still has a lot to learn from the great E3 games show...

Most "out-there" product: Motorola

When I walked into the Motorola area, at first I thought I stepped into Borg territory (Startrek reference...) - It seemed to inhabit half-man half-machine beings... Soon enough I was assimilated and became one of them by wearing Motorola's thingie... And in fact what seems to be science fiction at first is very down to earth. This device includes a tiny screen with a magnifying glass that is placed right in front of your eye (with a flexible arm that can be tilted) and when you look into it you get the experience of a full SVGA screen. It has no keyboard, and is activated by vocal commands and has several useful applications like a media player, an office-like suite etc. The idea here is to give people who need their hands free the ability to interact with a computer - for example in construction sites where you need both hands, but may need to take a look at some drawings from time to time. Pretty neat and useful - the only down side (Other than looking like a cyborg) is that it did give me a headache after a short while.

Yummiest Phone: NTT DoCoMo

One of the things I've noticed is that as handsets technology advances, it is very hard to really thrill in this domain. If a few years back a touch screen or a full qwerty phone was something to write about, today there's basically nothing new - all improvements of the UI and other handset parameters. So, if you can't innovate in the technology department, you can always do that in the style and design department, and this is exactly what several vendors did, and one of those is this really tasty looking NTT DoCoMo phone along with some cookies...

Worst Party Ever: Samsung

And talking about food, I can't forget the special treat some of Samsung's guests got in their party in the first day of the conference: Food poisoning... Yes, unfortunately for me I decided to go to the Samsung party and ate some tapas which tasted a bit weird and proved later on to be truly funky... Anyway, the lesson learned is to be very careful in Barcelona with the food... Samsung - please pick another venue next time... And despite their attempt on my life, I'll be kind and at least mention their Ruggedized phone edition which includes a phone for field purposes (Sand resistant and battery lasting for weeks) and their water-resistant phone shown here. Placing a mobile handset in your aquarium is elegant and it saves the need to buy fish food...

Sweetest Ride: Qualcomm

Another trend you couldn't miss this year was mobile integration with vehicles. It was very difficult to miss due to the cars several of the big companies placed in their booth. The one that caught my eye was Qualcomm's system installed in a luxurious Audi model (Coming to a dealership near you...). It had all you can dream of - a computerized system that includes GPS navigation, media system, speakerphone, internet browser - and all built it - the driver even has very convenient controls for the system near the stick. All communication is done mobile of course, and passengers can also enjoy wireless internet as the system includes a WiFi router... Indeed a sweet ride...

Coolest Demo: BlackBerry

The Blackberry guys had the neatest demo I've seen. To demonstrate their device's gyro, they wrote a controller for a small Lego robot - If you tilted the device forward, the robot drove forward and so on for all directions - that was really neat, and though I don't think that Apple has driven them into the Lego business, it was really a nice way to catch audience and explain about their stuff - so way to go...

Greenest solution: Asimelec

The green trend is all over the world these days, and Asimelec, which is a Spanish association backed by some of the prominent handset vendors and mobile operators has a solution for your old mobile device: recycle it... These guys place recycling bins for mobile phones and disintegrate them into components that can be recycled back into other industries. And with the current rate of devices innovation, they probably have their hands/bins full... Asimelec's booth was also the most original one: It was made wholly out of cardboard... The booth, the chairs, the table - everything...

Worst use of space: A bags shop?

Yes, the picture here is from MWC 2010 and not from a fashion trade show... It seems that they will sell space just about to anyone these days...But seriously this booth which was quite centrally located (Right in the entrance to hall 8) was a bit weird to see considering the surroundings, but still perhaps when you have lots of men away from home that have to come back with some gifts, it might be a pretty good idea... In fact, I bet they are the only booth who actually made instant money in this show...

Best Giveaway: Google

It was a good show for Google - if last year we saw only a few Android prototypes, this year we experienced an explosion of Android based devices from many vendors. But every blessing has its drawbacks and in this case word of the fragmentation in the Android platform was heard from various sources (And we all saw the toll it took on JavaME). But anyway, Google will probably not be remembered in this show (only) for this but rather for the generous giveaway.... Now, we all got used to giveaways in conferences, including branded mints, pens, bags and even sometimes disk-on-keys. But Google really set a new barrier in MWC 2010: Everyone who attended their Android seminar got a Nexus One phone. Yes - EVERYONE. The only catch was that you either had to be pre-registered to the seminar, or stand for an hour-two in the non-registered queue (Which got bigger as the rumor spread...). And BTW - If you saw people with weird pink markings on their hands - it is how Google marked (or indexed?) people so they won't grab more than one device... Unfortunately for me I got the news kinda late, so when I got there it was already closed... So, Google - if your intention was to hand out phones to mobile developers, bloggers and other professionals so they would spread the word - you missed one (Should I give you my mailing address?... :)

Well that's all for this year, I am sure you all had your experiences as well, so if you saw something interesting drop a comment right here.

Java news: Oracle buys Sun, Google Java App Engine and LWUIT

I just returned this week from a 2 weeks vacation and got straight back into the action... Just 2 days ago I was in a meeting in Sun Microsystems, and halfway through the meeting, Sun actually became Oracle, after being purchased by the latter in one of the biggest deals lately...

Many analysts seem to think that Oracle will use this acquistion to provide with a full IT solution (i.e. Oracle's DB and software and Sun's servers) and be able to compete more fiercely with IBM. However, I believe that Sun's greatest asset is not its hardware. In fact, Sun lost a lot of its edge in the high-end and robust computing arena in recent years to competitors of all kinds. Its SPARC processor that was in the heart of their servers in the past lost its place to Intel in almost every market which led Sun itself to move to Intel some years ago. After that, the dive into becoming a commodity in a saturated was pretty quick.

But Sun has one thing that tops any hardware - and that's Java. What started as a side project evolved to become one of the most dominant programming languages in the world, and spawned to power a wide range of applications: desktop, enterprise and mobile. Oracle is a software company and has invested a lot in Java as it is. So it seems to me that this is the strong connection point between the two companies and not necessarily the hardware. It will be interesting to see what Oracle's vision is with Java, and in particular J2ME.

Also it would be interesting to see Oracle's strategy in regards to MySQL which was acquired by Sun lately. MySQL is a cheap and simple competitor to Oracle's elaborate DB software, will it remain free for development/non-commercial? Will it remain at all?... (Probably it will and be renamed to Oracle super-ultra-lite or something like it...)

And on more Java news - Google App engine now supports Java! These are great news for all Java developers. Up until now the engine supported Python only, but now it supports a real programming language... (Just kidding Python is also cool...), for those of you who don't know, Google's app engine basically allows you to run your appliation on their computing cloud, similar to what Amazon is offering, but with Google, the first 5M page hits or so per month are free...

And last but not least, LWUIT, Sun's (or should I already say Oracle's) UI framework for J2ME is making some great progress, I am working closely with several companies helping them adopt it, and also working with Sun/Oracle on some interesting projects that will give LWUIT even more "zing" in some markets.

Anyway, it's going to be a pretty busy month or two, but I'll still try to squeeze in a post here and there...

MIDs, UMPCs and the iPhone

One of the trends in the CES show earlier this month was the rise of MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices). MIDs are basically ultra portable internet consoles. Unlike laptops or PDAs, they do not have to run any Windows (or other platform) applications - they can run only one application: a web browser.

The MIDs are in fact a branch in the UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC) family, and while UMPCs are designed to be just very small PCs (with operating systems, ability to install and run applications, store things locally etc.), the MID are less "ambitious" but in my opinion, more to the point of what most mobile users need.

The MIDs are small and lightweight (naturally), typically have a 4.5-7 inch displays, and some creative keyboard solutions (blackberry-like small keys, a sliding keyboard under the screen, touch screen keyboard etc.). Also, their processor does not have to be cutting-edge, and in fact Intel is developing several weak processors especially for MIDs.

Now, a few years back, this would have been a weak solution for on the go computing, since you can't do anything when you're offline, and also you cannot run applications such as Microsoft Office.

However, there are two things that changed over the last few years that make those two arguments obsolete:

1. Applications have migrated online

A few years ago, it was Sun Microsystems who coined the term "The network is the computer". Everybody was talking about online applications stored and managed centrally, accessed by users who pay per use or license it for a certain period of time instead of the model where you buy a piece of software, install it locally and use it indefinitely (or until the next version comes out...).

Sun did a lot to make that vision happen, but on the consumer applications side, it was Google that really made it. While reading emails online is old news (so last millennium...) Google's GMail was truly innovative for its time, and eliminated the slowness problem most webmails had (and still have). In addition with Google Calendar you can manage your calendar and with Google Documents you can read and write documents, presentations and worksheets. Now I know Microsoft's Office is still better - but give it time... And don't get me started on the killer app of them all - Google Maps...

Aside from Google there are a lot of other great services available online. Today with AJAX technologies you can make great fast apps that require just a simple browser. With the addition of two standard plugins - Java and Flash you can also play online games and have access to advanced applications.

In short, Sun's vision is no longer a vision, it is happening, and while people have been saying that for quite a while, today I can say personally that I use mostly web-based services. I find it very convenient as my data is accessible from anywhere and I don't have to sync computers, move files manually (disk on key) etc.


2. You can't be productive offline

When I find myself with my laptop but there's no WiFi around, I do all sorts of things: I am cleaning my desktop, removing installed applications, moving files from folder to folder - in short my productivity is similar to the productivity of a painter that has colors.

Today we read the news on the web, we communicate with our friends and colleagues (email, IM, VoIP, social networking), we search for almost about anything (and find it!), we read articles, make our travel arrangements, bid on and purchase stuff, check our financials and perform financial actions (bank accounts, stock portfolio, credit cards etc.), blog and more.

When your computer is offline - it is disabled. You can't do at least 80% of the things you would usually do. I will repeat once again Sun's motto: The network is the computer. As simple as that.

Another element that helped us get addicted to the internet is the rise of WiFi networks. If you are on the go, you would have no problem finding internet access in your hotel, coffee house or even in the train.


To sum it up, it seems to me that MIDs are about to get popular. They are definitely a great solution for mainstream users (and even advanced ones). In fact, one MID that got really popular although it wasn't necesarily sold as such is the iPhone...

The iPhone fits the criteria of MID, and is in-fact a very well-done MID, keeping things smart and simple, and focusing on the real things mobile user need. It also have the mobile phone functionality, which gives you extra mobility in the rare cases where you can't find WiFi... (By the way, voice calls is not something it adds - since you can do those in MIDs with various VoIP programs, today it's sometimes complicated, but it will get easier as more and more people will be always connected).

So it's no surprise Apple sold over 1 million iPhones in one quarter, and I do believe that this is certainly an indicator not only to the mobile phone industry, but also to UMPCs and MIDs (The borders are getting a bit blurry, aren't they?...)

Summer time (And the gPhone)

August is here and the sun is high in the sky, and though I myself am not on vacation (a lot of interesting things are happening these days in GamearraY), a lot of lucky people are...

And this is why I decided to postpone the publishing of articles I received in the last couple of months. As you remember (or not) this blog will soon feature posts written by others and not just myself (And if you are a mobile specialist you're also more than welcome to join the team).

I have already collected some articles from various mobile industry professionals and we have interesting pieces about mobile advertising, media, messaging, video and more. Since I don't want these posts to go up unnoticed (due to summer time) I am planning to publish them on September.

In the meantime (if I am already writing this post...) I should mention the gPhone or Google Phone or whatever you want to call it... There have been some rumors about it and they are now getting stronger... you can read about it in Mashable! (Which is a great web 2.0 blog if you don't know it yet).

Go Yahoo! Go

Have you seen Yahoo! Go 2.0? If not, go get it. Go is Yahoo's interpretation of how the mobile web experience should look like, and from all I've seen up until now - they got it right.

Yahoo! Go is a client application that allows you to basically do everything. Starting with search of course, browsing the web, accessing your Yahoo! mail account, accessing your Flickr account, finding directions and maps, checking the weather, news from around the world (via RSS) and more.

Being an all-in-one solution often means compromise in the various components withing the solution, but Yahoo! succeeded in giving a best of breed solution to each and every one of the enclosed components (With the understandable exception that you can only access their own proprietary services such as Yahoo! Mail and Flickr).

Generally, the interface is very user friendly and also "easy on the eyes" (You can see it yourselves in their slightly annoying demo video). Switching between the different applications is done via a carousel at the bottom of the screen. The applications themselves feature the same navigation and text entering interfaces, so once you learned the basics in one app, you are good to go in the others. Yahoo! have even placed an Intro tour that guides you through the interface in the first time.

About the various apps themselves, let's start with the search engine which is custom tailored for the mobile, and knows to bring the most relevant items, whether these are sites, pictures, reviews etc. For example if you search for a celebrity you will immediately get her pictures on the top... If you search for a movie, you'll get links for buying tickets and so on. Giving the relevant items on a mobile device, is even harder than on the web, since you want to give the user the top 80%-90% of the relevant results in the first page, which is difficult enough even on the web, but more difficult when you have the screen of a handset...

When you find what you want - you can browse the site with Yahoo! Go. It doesn't send you to the handset's mobile browser (which often doesn't cut it), instead Go features its own browser that also formats even regular web pages to your mobile, similar to what other mobile browsers such as Opera Mobile do (And this can be a big threat for Opera).

And of course you get ads on the top of the page if Yahoo! wants to, and these are ads from their network, regardless of what site you are browsing... In fact, as mobile advertising is getting more and more mainstream, the strategic value of having a "real estate" on the mobile phone is getting to be extremely important for search engines.

Back to the product: The Maps service is simply amazing, you can ask for directions, get them verbally and see them on the Map (And if you have a GPS, you can see where you are on the map). The weather service also works great, and you can easily add any location that you are interested in. Same goes for RSS news - add your own sources, track specific people or companies etc. You also have sports, finance and entertainment sections that are already configured with content sources.

Flickr access is very easy, and browsing through your pictures or others pictures is very intuitive and surprisingly fast. You need to enter your Yahoo! ID once, and then it automatically recognizes you both on Flickr and in Yahoo! Mail (Which also works great, but Google/Gmail provided such a service a long time ago).

In addition it seems that Yahoo! have dedicated a lot of thought to reducing data traffic, which is considered rightfully as a barrier for acceptance of mobile applications by users. You can check at any time how much data you transferred, and at the end of the session, you see the amount of data transferred. My "test drive" (on Nokia N73) included checking mail, entering my Flickr account and browsing through thumbnails of my pictures, asking for directions in NY and seeing them on the map (plus zooming in, moving the map a bit etc.), searching and browsing a few sites and more - and all of that consumed only about 0.5MB (At least that what Go reported...)

Now, what's the catch? Well the most significant issue now is that their device support matrix is still rather small - a lot of the phones appear on the site as supported but marked with a "coming soon" label. In any case, the support is improving. A few months ago, right after 3GSM 2007, where I originally saw Go, I tried to download it to my SonyEricsson K800i but it wasn't supported. Today it is.

Another small issue is the size of the application: 613KB for the Nokia N73 version... Nowadays it's not much of a problem, since devices have dozens of MB available for apps, but still it can take a lot of time to install over the air, especially if you don't have 3G. In addition, it makes me wonder how the implementation would look on older phones that they claim to be "coming soon".

And of course there's the issue of the content itself. On the web I usually tend to use Google's services, whether it's Gmail, Picasa or Blogger (used to write this blog). The question is whether having a great mobile solution such as Yahoo! Go will change my (and others) usage patterns when it comes to the web.

And while we are talking about Google, let's see what they have to offer: Google mobile services include their Gmail client and a Google Maps client. all the rest of the services are WAP based. Now you may ask what's wrong about WAP? Well, just read on a bit more (you've come so far...)

The Google Maps client interface is not an eye candy, but it has some nice features Yahoo! doesn't have. As for Gmail, I should say a few good words here: Gmail client was truly innovative for its time, both in terms of interface and usability. I am using it for over a year now if I remember correctly, and as a person who doesn't like carrying around my laptop (or using a heavy PDA) it changed my email availability altogether.

Google had a WAP version for Gmail even earlier, and I used that too, but as WAP services often are it was soooo sloooow so I avoided using it too much. So today when people are asking me what's wrong about WAP, I am telling them that the point in time when I started using mail on my mobile as a real alternative was when Gmail client came out (And usually they remember that it was the same for them...)

As I mentioned, aside from the mail and maps, Google offers the other services as well, but in WAP mode, and the experience is very far away than the experience you get with Yahoo! Go. Yahoo! is definitely on the lead here.

So, Yahoo! - you get a big thumbs up from me (I know you were waiting anxiously for this approval...) and Google - start running and fast - the mobile space is one place you don't want to lose to Yahoo!...

P.S. - I know everyone is blogging about the iPhone these days, so I'll make my contribution as well: Yahoo! Go supports the iPhone, and this shows how strong iPhone is from the get go. (And not another word unless Apple wants to send me one so I can review it properly...)

Walking down the street... on the web...

Well, this has nearly nothing to do with mobile content, but it is so cool that I couldn't not write about it...

Google has launched a new service inside Google Maps which is called "Streetview". The service allows you to see how the streets actually look like as if you were walking/driving. As I understand Google (or actually its partner for this project, Immersive Media) took a car out on the streets with a special camera on top of it, and there you have it: America is physically on-line...

The great thing is that though these are static images, you can go in any direction with a very intuitive inteface, and it really looks like as if you were walking down the street (a frozen in time street, but still...).

Currently the service covers areas in New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Denver & Miami but I am sure they'll get everywhere soon enough...

Anyway, you simply have to check it out yourselves. But beware - it's addictive...