Talk moves on at mobile congress
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The mobile world is at 3GSM in Barcelona discussing how to get people to do more with their handsets.
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20 years young and past its prime? Mobile World Congress SIM manufacturers still have some of the largest stands here at Mobile World Congress, but not as big as last year and with a lot less to show on them. Now the industry is betting that proximity payments will be their future, and if they're wrong they'll be a lot of empty space here in Barcelona come 2009.â¦
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Not quite the usual conference call.
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A number of chip manufacturers are showing Google's Android software platform for mobile phones running on prototype or proof-of-concept phones at the Mobile World Congress.
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At the year's largest mobile industry conference in Barcelona next week, the iPhone and a new Windows Mobile OS are expected to be the talk of the town.
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The Mobile World Congress, underway February 11-14 in Barcelona, Spain, puts the spotlight on mobile broadband gear, services, software, and strategies. Read CNET's full coverage here.
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SAN DIEGO -- Here at the DemoMobile 2004 conference, about 40 vendors had six minutes each to demonstrate their wireless technology invention to the crowd. Some products, although amazing in description, don't translate very well on the live screen and in such a tight time constraint. Some demonstrations, however, entirely captivate the audience and leave in their wake an audible buzz of excited voices.
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Technology that can converge different wireless gadgets into a single device is discussed at a conference.
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The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week may see the first mobile phone to incorporate Google's open-source Android platform.
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By MATT MOORE  BARCELONA, Spain - The wireless industry meets in Barcelona this week with a bevy of flashy new cell phones, faster networks and more entertainment geared for the small screen taking center stage at the 3GSM World Congress.
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Wireless industry players place their bets on the future during the four-day Mobile World Congress opening Monday in Barcelona, laying stakes on the next big thing with new product launches, services and alliances.
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The cellular telephone industry&#39;s game of musical chairs has started again, and the music may soon stop with one less chair. Nextel Communications is in advanced talks to merge with Sprint, according to executives involved in the negotiations.
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Amid iPod upgrades, movie deals and Apple TV price cuts, there was a tinge of politics at the Macworld Conference & Expo.
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Several more members of the mobile&#160;Linux Phone Standards Forum (LiPS) are switching allegiance to the LiMo Foundation, this time including board and executive committee members, indicating that LiPS is losing steam.Orange and its parent France Telecom, Access and Open-Plug all plan to announce at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday that they are joining LiMo. More vendors uniting behind LiMo could help to speed up the rate at which the companies can bring Linux-based devices to market.&quot;We probably will move out of LiPS at some point because it doesn&#39;t make sense to keep two different initiatives on the same topic,&quot; said Yves Christol, director of device development at Orange. Access and Orange Telecom will both join the board of LiMo. The president of LiPS, Haila Wang, works for France Telecom. Access and Open-Plug both have members on the LiPS board and executive committee.Montavista and Purple Labs have recently joined LiMo, though they appear to be staying active in LiPS as well. Trolltech recently quit LiPS in favor of LiMo. More may follow. Orange explained to the other LiPS members why it abandoned ship, &quot;and we believe some of them will share the same vision and will follow us and join LiMo,&quot; Christol said.LiPS appears to be holding out hope that some companies may continue to work with both groups. &quot;To the best of my knowledge, membership in one or any of these [organizations] is not an exclusive commitment,&quot; said Bill Weinberg, general manager of the LiPS Forum.Because the two groups take different approaches, they aren&#39;t in competition and are working toward a common goal, Weinberg said. &quot;Both organizations strive to fight fragmentation by improving interoperability of mobile applications and services across handsets and operators,&quot; he said.Timing appears to be driving many of these companies to gravitate toward LiMo. &quot;LiPS is essentially a standards-based organization,&quot; said Michel Piquemal, general manager for Access in France and director of strategic planning for the company in Europe. Most standards-setting processes take years to complete.LiMo, by contrast, has created a software stack made out of components contributed by various members. The&#160;first release of LiMo is expected in March. While&#160;LiPS has recently released a specification&#160;for some basic phone functions, LiMo plans to announce in Barcelona 18 LiMo phones, including some that are already on the market.&quot;Our approach is extremely fast and direct,&quot; said Morgan Gillis, executive director of LiMo. &quot;The mobile industry, particularly in this phase, is dynamic and fast-moving -- and therefore, in order to make an impression, we have to do something that is practical and produces deliverables and is immediately usable by the industry.&quot;Other companies that planned to announce membership in LiMo on Monday include AMD, Renasas Technology, SoftBank and STMicroelectronics, bringing the number of members in the group to 32.LiPS and LiMo operate in addition to the Open Handset Alliance, the group Google started with its Android mobile software platform. Some companies have membership in both OHA and LiMo. So far, there isn&#39;t any indication that Google might try to align its efforts with LiMo.&quot;LiMo is fully open and we would be very receptive if Google expressed direct interest in working with us,&quot; said Gillis. &quot;LiMo is not in direct discussions with Google about Android joining LiMo.&quot;NOTE:This story was previously posted under embargo. It is now being reposted as it is available for immediate use online.
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Omnivision conference call notes and forcasts.
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What might your mobile future look like? Sitting at the airport, you pull out a laptop or personal digital assistant and watch TV, delivered through Wi-Fi. Perhaps you'll grab an MP3 player instead, but rather than listen to downloaded tunes, you check out Internet radio. Or maybe you'll just make a call but thanks to the headset into which you are speaking, the person at the other end can make out your voice and not the blur of jet engines taking off at the same time.Each scenario is already possible, as evidenced last week in La Jolla, Calif., during the sixth annual DemoMobile conference. The gathering is a showcase for promising wireless technologies targeted at people on the go. Three dozen companies participated, many start-ups, representing more than &#36;142 million in cumulative venture funding.Consider the scope: Luxembourg's Skype Technologies demonstrated free software that lets consumers make voice calls over a Wi-Fi-capable Pocket PC.Handmark of Kansas City, Mo., showed off Pocket Express, a wireless information service for smart phones. If a phone has "location-based" capabilities, Handmark can provide listings of nearby restaurants or theaters, and map the fastest route to that spot.Xora in Mountain View, Calif., lets companies track the whereabouts of mobile employees via its GPS TimeTrack offering. And EverNote in Sunnyvale, Calif., has software that lets someone organize notes on a PC, then synchronize them with portable devices.OurPictures unveiled the OurPictures Mobile service. With a single click, consumers can send photos taken with a camera phone to designated PCs, TVs, printers or a local photo processor. And games publisher Sorrent showed off a new way to punch in your vote: its Bush vs. Kerry Boxing cell phone game. The results of every Bush/Kerry rumble on every portable phone are scored on a pugilist poll posted at Sorrent's site; as of Wednesday, Kerry was out-pointing Bush by about 2,350 votes. Other would-be knockouts:&#8226;Couch computing. The &#36;800, 2.3-pound wireless Pepper Pad 2 from Pepper Computer in Lexington, Mass., lets you browse the Web, do e-mail, play videos and games and more. Due in January, it has an 8.4-inch display, Bluetooth, an SD card slot and 20 GB hard drive. It also has a directional game pad and small lighted qwerty keypad that is split so that half flanks the left side of the screen and half, the right.&#8226;Making a motion. Synaptics is behind the track-wheel on Apple's iPods and the touchpads on several notebook PCs. The new MobileTouch platform is Synaptics' foray into cell phones. You'll be able to scribble on the screen or scroll by using your fingers to lightly make small gestures across a keypad (or other interface), just as you do with a touchpad. I was wowed even more by technology out of Oulu, Finland, where F-Origin originated a "motion control solution" called Iris. Consumers using a phone or computer with F-Origin's software will be able to control the orientation of the screen by merely tilting and moving the device. What you see on the display corresponds to the angle in which you rotate the gizmo. F-Origin takes advantage of gravity sensors.&#8226;That's (mobile) entertainment. ViewSonic's new Wireless Media Gateway and Wireless Media Adapter (&#36;799 packaged together, and coming later in the year) represent the company's move into wireless networking. The product line is designed to deliver digital videos, music and pictures to any monitor or TV in the house, at better-than-DVD quality. The company says it can stream video to a single TV at up to 10 megabits per second or two different streams at 5 megabits. You can also print from the gateway devices and take advantage of 80 or 120 GB storage capacities.Watching TV on a handheld is the idea behind WiFi-TV from OnAir Entertainment in Sunnyvale, Calif. OnAir is working with hot-spot providers to deliver TV or video-on-demand at public places. Consumers can access an interactive programming guide and pause live TV. OnAir is conducting a free trial at the Austin airport, though the company expects people to eventually pay about &#36;5 for a day pass.Meanwhile, another Silicon Valley start-up, AudioFeast, is focusing on Internet radio for portable music players. Its virtual broadcasting network delivers refreshed content from A &amp; E, BBC Radio, NPR and Sporting News Radio, among others. You download software onto your computer, then choose the channels you want to sync with a compatible MP3 player. A one-year AudioFeast subscription costs &#36;50. Contact my phone. Is there anything more tedious than entering hundreds of phone numbers into a phone? Palo Alto, Calif.-based Vazu has come up with a suite of services that lets you automatically transmit selected contacts, as well as such Web data as driving directions or movie schedules, to a phone. Vazu's Internet Explorer plug-in places a small "V" icon next to a phone number on a Web page. When you click on the icon, the contact name and number are sent to your phone. What's more, users of Outlook, Outlook Express, Apple Mail and Linux Evolution can dispatch contacts via Vazu to their phone's address book. Lose a phone? Vazu can serve as a backup to your data. &#8226;Now hear this. Logitech, Plantronics and Aliph submitted headsets for a Sound Off challenge voted on by conference attendees. The winner was Aliph's Jawbone, based on military-grade technology. To prove that this funky-looking &#36;150 "adaptive" headset can suppress background noises while keeping a caller's voice audible, Aliph conducted a crowd-pleasing experiment. First a caller had a noisy blender behind him. When Jawbone's technology was applied, the person could be heard clearly, not the blender. Aliph successfully repeated the exercise with a boombox. The coup de gr&#226;ce: The caller could be heard over a weed whacker. It is made possible by a sensor that feels vibrations on your cheek. Jawbone works with phones from Motorola, Nokia and Sony Ericsson.&#8226;Mobile marketing. Intrigued by the Armani, Gap or Toyota ads in the September issue of Jane? Snap a picture and e-mail images to the magazine. You'll get back text messages with tailored promotional offers. It's part of a promotion based on technology from conference demonstrator Mobot.The Waltham, Mass., company was but one demonstrator to give a hint where mobile marketing is heading. MediaTile of Scotts Valley, Calif., delivers point-of-sale digital signs. Digimarc in Tualatin, Ore., places invisible digital watermarks into banner ads. When a consumer takes a picture of, say, a movie ad, they might see a trailer on the phone or directions to the nearest theater. Another demonstrator, DRM Labs of Dallas, uses text messages to send digital coupons called Voupons. For these schemes to pan out, consumers must "opt-in; privacy must be respected."This is just the tip of the iceberg for many of the companies exhibiting at DemoMobile. Indeed, I expect to explore some of these technologies in future coverage. After all, what could be more mobile than the pace of change?E-mail ebaig@usatoday.com
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CEO Steve Ballmer is speaking at the big mobile phone trade show on Tuesday. It will be interesting to see the tack he takes vis-a-vis Apple.