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MWC: Day 1 Roundup
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009It’s been a day of big press conferences today as some of the big players laid out their big announcements in the hope of dominating the news:
Nokia have launched the E55 and E75 business handsets – Like so much of their recent announcements the hardware of these devices really impresses. I challenge anyone not to be impressed with the build quality and attention to detail… The E75 is as widely leaked. The E55 is a pleasant surprise – even thinner than it’s older sibling the E51, it packs a huge battery and an almost Blackberry Pearl-like keyboard that’s 5 keys wide (each one serving as 2 characters across a QWERTY keyboard) with the central 3 laid out in a traditional 1 to 9 block. In the hand it feels exceptional. Software is improved – Nokia have finally included the improved mail client out of the box – but compared to the exceptional hardware build it’s still to easy to get buried in menu systems or the complexity of the S60 OS.
Nokia and Microsoft have launched the Ovi Store and Windows Marketplace respectively – To complete the set (Android announced paid-for apps yesterday), today the last two major platforms added their official ‘market places’. The Windows Marketplace was announced without fanfare… a box-ticking exercise amidst higher-profile news (Windows Mobile 6.5 and MyPhone). The Ovi store came with more details – notably operator billing, the inclusion of ‘content’ (games and media) and a social recommendations engine, but questions about user experience and quality assurance of the applications remain. Ultimately this is unglamourous news, but signals (if ever it were needed) that app discovery is going to get great deal easier for consumers very soon. It’s ubiquity, however, will mean it’s not a factor that will attract consumers to any particular platform. The cynics amongst us (and there are a few) wonder if, given the slow speed the idea has been taken up whether it will be another 2 to 3 years before we see them well executed.
Android news is really thin on the ground and Microsoft are everywhere - There are rumours of an HTC G2 Android device being announced later during the show and Huawei have a non-working prototype of their forthcoming handset, but otherwise we’re set to wait until later in the year for LG and Samsung’s Android offerings. Conversely, many are noting that both have instead made significant announcements of handsets running Windows Mobile 6.5 with Toshiba and Asus also in on the act. With Steve Ballmer fronting the Microsoft press event it was slick, if not a bit cringe-worthy at times (they’re not employing the cream of comedy script writing), but it’s worth noting that we’ve seen absolutely no presence from Google here at all representing Android. At all. And with this many developers attending that seems really odd.
Day 2 looks promising with another widely-leaked Nokia announcement due and some opportunities to meet a few less high-profile companies.
MWC: What we have learned today
Monday, February 16th, 2009Despite being an ‘exhibition’, Mobile World Congress is a terrible place for firms to actually do any real communicating – to customers, partners or media. It’s even worse if you hope to actually gather any information. As a venue Fira is nothing short of incredible – perched on the hill-side overlooking Barcelona a small mobile industry town has sprung up… There’s a Nokia stand the size of my ‘apartment’ (well, several stands), a TV studio, a whole T-Mobile marquee and restaurants by the dozen all with super-bright lighting for the many cameras. Plenty of dazzle, but the aim of most companies seems merely to be to physically hand-over or read-out (in a press conferences) as much information as possible. It’s nearly impossible to consume and often fairly soul-less. Of course, the seasoned journos and bloggers know this and seek out face-to-face briefings, but it’s confusing that so many companies are investing (obviously substantial) amounts in making announcements and publicising their products.
But it’s far from a dead-loss… the real value of these events is the unplanned meetings. Like Andrea, the Italian industry analyst, we met this morning whilst marching around Barcelona’s marina event in search of a Nokia event. Fresh back from Rome, I still couldn’t understand why there was so muh talk of mobile TV (DVB-H) from Italy, but little evidence of any real usage. Andrea assured us we should believe our eyes – Vodafone and TIM were leaving their mobile TV offering to go stale… un-marketed and un-loved. Three, although more actively pushing the service (as we witnessed in their stores) was struggling financially. The official subscriber numbers, he said, were misleading – they represent customers receiving free access to mobile TV services as part of a subscription, not a source of additional revenue for the operators.
And so, in 5 minutes, more useful information than all of the heavily scripted and stage-managed Microsoft event that followed… Perhaps we should scrap all our briefings and hang round the bar a bit more… Hmmmm….
The MIR Mobile World Congress Gear
Saturday, February 14th, 2009The first blurry snap of the new Mobile Industry Review-branded gear raised a fair bit of interest so just ahead of us jetting off to Barcelona tomorrow, here’s a few better pictures:
Anyone want a MIR sticker?
Fun Text to be pre-loaded on Sony Ericsson handset
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
Today Sony Ericsson is announcing a deal to pre-load the Fun Text application onto one of its new handsets – the new C905 Plus on 3 UK, which is to launch in Q2 this year. Fun Text will enable easy access from the handset to online galleries of animation and video content designed for messaging. The application also integrates with the address book on the handset.“With 8.1 megapixels, the C905 already enables the best in user generated content and we are delighted to complement this with the best in professionally generated content”, said James Pycock, business development director at Fun Text.
The INQ1 gets an update
Thursday, February 5th, 2009
At a small (but select) gathering tonight INQ – the makers of the ’social’ handset the INQ1 – that grew out of the operator Three announced ‘Update 1′, an over-the-air refresh of the INQ1’s application suite which makes a number of improvements and feature-additions. These improve Windows Live Messenger performance, give better general stability, pre-cache Facebook photos for performance and improve the battery life (the improvement is described as ’significant’ – up to 50% longer depending on use). Users will be prompted to update the software in 4 to 6 weeks. INQ’s marketing director Jeff Taylor commented that INQ expected to provide further updates in the future and that, where possible, new features would be distributed to all INQ devices as additional handsets were added to the range.
At the event, the team also announced the INQ1 had been short-listed as one of five devices in the GSMA Global Mobile Awards ‘Best Handset / Device‘ category to be announced at Mobile World Congress in a fortnight and the launch of a media and blogger-relations programme ‘INQ+’ intended to provide a forum for feedback and beta testing of forthcoming software / devices.
Nokia 5800 ‘The Tube’ Launch Event
Monday, January 26th, 2009As promised, James and I braved the rain on Friday to attend the launch event for Nokia’s first Symbian touch-driven device, the Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic – also often still known by its pre-launch name ‘The Tube’. Available exclusively via Nokia’s two flagship stores in London’s Regent Street and Heathrow Terminal 5 plus the Nokia online store (at least that’s what the press release says – the online store is still only offering a ‘pre-order’ option right now), it will also be available from all of the major UK network operators (with the exception of Three) starting Friday 30th.
Priced at £249 SIM-free, it’s expected to be free with contract on most tariffs and – we’re all agreed – is pretty exceptional value, although some are dissappointed it’s not a ‘Comes With Music‘ handset yet. Nokia shifted 500,000 of these things in 30 days of sales, with over a million sold even before the UK launch.
At the event James reprised his ‘normob walkabout’ role in the queue of eager first-customers, we spoke to Mark Loughran (Managing Director, Nokia UK and Ireland), got a demo of the device and even managed to get ten minutes with friend-of-the-show Rafe Blandford from the excellent AllAboutSymbian.com.
A 5 minute extract of the Mark Loughran is available on YouTube or the full show is embedded below and hitting the podcast feeds right now. Take a look:
Nokia 5800 ‘Tube’ Launch at Nokia’s Regent St flagship store from Ben Smith on Vimeo.
‘Just for fun’ there’s also a brief outtakes reel for the people who have drunkenly told me ‘they were the best bit’. Feel free to ignore it if you’re a sensible person…
Nokia 5800 Launch – Out Takes from Ben Smith on Vimeo.
Lastminute Labs Launch NRU
Sunday, January 25th, 2009
The team over at Lastminute Labs – the hive of mobile innovation inside online travel and bookings site Lastminute.com – have been in touch to announce they have release NRU, the application for Android handsets (so just the G1 right now) we previewed in December.
In their own words:
nru shows you things to do near you, either a compass-like circle of things around you if you hold the phone flat, or a straight-ahead view of things in each direction if you hold the phone up. Right now we have all our fonefood restaurants and deals in there, as well as a host of useful content from Qype, everything from cafes and cinemas to bars and bowling alleys.
It’s available in the Android marketplace now, so go and try it out or if you need to jog your memory, check out their original preview video:
