MWC 2009: New presentations at the mobile show

Like each  year, the Mobile World Congress show takes place in Barcelona, giving us the opportunity to see what’s coming up in the year and beyond in the mobile phone sector. The biggest companies (as well as some small ones) were present and unveiled parts of the future strategies and current projects.

This is also a good occasion to see what’s going on in mobile network technologies. Unfortunately, the show is so vast that we didn’t get a chance to look at the LTE announcements (Long Term Evolution) or WiMAX, which had numerous points of information.


From this point of view, things are quickly advancing but it is still too early to see any real progress. We have instead preferred to concentrate on the mobile hand sets that were present and the hardware platforms which will be seen from 2010 to 2012.

Like each year, the same question keeps coming up: is this year going to be a good one? We should firstly note that there were noticeable signs of the global economic crisis. For 2009, the show bought together 47000 participants, while last year saw 55000.

This become evident from the second day (for a show spanning four days), with aisles that were not as packed and assaults on the different stands being more civilised. There were also fewer presentations this year, with 1300 displays compared to 1500 last year.

The crisis was also noticed from the media contingent: the organisation delivered 2400 invitations to accredited members, (all media and personnel included) against 2700 a year ago.

The surprises aren’t always where you think they may be
So was it a good year? Yes, but not necessarily in terms of hand sets. Those that came to see the new models left with the impression of just seeing a continuation of that which we already know (updated function, incorporation of latest technologies) rather then a break with the past.

There was once again an absence of Android hand sets (besides the HTC Magic), with some interesting products being present but not necessarily outstanding, as they left us with the feeling that not a lot of progress has been made. Progress has been made though in terms of tactile interfaces and battery life, although not necessarily on a specific hand set.

We did see something of a break with the past in terms of hardware platforms. In reality, we should be talking more about transition. Up to now, the hand sets always had more and more functions, but never an extension of battery life which lead to user frustrations as they would have to juggle their use while limiting their mobile use so as to arrive at the end of the day.

What has now been promised by the makers is not just more power in the platforms, but in battery life. It’s no longer a question of getting through a day without using half of your functions, as now you will be able to get through multiple days with connectivity options being constantly activated.

The new architectures have advanced in preparation for the arrival of new products that are fully mobile. Of course, between the marketing spiel and reality, there will surely be a time lapse to take into account, but the first prototypes presented are already look to be quite promising.

We also saw technologies which are more or less finalised but which we had a look at, with it soon being possible to project video with your phone via the integrated pico projector, new tactile interfaces offering real multi-touch and wireless options.