Mobile World Congress 2008 preview: part one

There is a plethora of mobile industry players exhibiting, speaking and attending next week's Mobile World Congress (MWC, formerly 3GSM) in Barcelona. News announcements and technical sessions are likely to be fast and furious with a danger of missing something if you bother to take the time to blink.

IT PRO will be attending the congress to bring you the news as it happens, but to whet your appetite and ensure you don't miss anything, we contacted those making an appearance and asked them for a sneak peek into what we can expect. This is the first of a three-part series - come back Thursday for part two.

We asked: "Without giving away too many secrets, what can people expect from you at the forthcoming Mobile World Congress (formerly 3GSM) and why should business and IT decision makers be interested?"

Here's what they had to say:

A

Accenture

"There still seems to be a lot of money being spent on big integration/convergence projects both inside and outside the home. Think about your own wireless service at home. How well is the wireline phone service tied into your cell phone service? Are they managed and billed separately?" said Andy Zimmerman, managing director of Accenture's communications industry arm. "It is a momentous challenge for the wireless and wireline carriers as there are many work-arounds or obstacles that have inhibited this convergence. Companies who thrive in the converged communications, high technology and media marketplace will be those who provide the best end-to-end experience to their customers."

He added: "By providing a seamless and integrated user experience across mobile phones, TVs and PCs - and other access points - companies will have the opportunity to bring these devices to life and encourage long-term customer loyalty."

Actimagine

"At Mobile World Congress, Actimagine will be unveiling mobiclip.com, a web portal that enables users to create their own web page, on which they can manage video content selected from an extensive range of sources. Video-on-Demand, internet video, live television, personal videos including webcam videos are all possible," said André Pagnac, the company's chief executive.

ADC

"ADC will be showcasing the components of its IP-RAN product portfolio - the only vendor with a product set in the industry that unifies all elements of RAN infrastructure (outdoor coverage, indoor coverage, and backhaul). This includes a new set of comprehensive solutions that take advantage of combined ADC/LGC market expertise," ADC said.

"With over 70 per cent of mobile operators' customers making calls that start indoors, IT and carrier business decision-makers should watch for our introduction of enterprise solutions -InterReach Office, a new IP-based GSM base station designed for SME deployment, and our FlexWave Universal Radio Head, which unifies and simplifies outdoor network coverage extension by incorporating all services in a single unit."

Airwide Solutions

"Airwide will be making announcements focused around the mobile advertising space," said Jay Seaton, the company's chief marketing officer. "We expect future mobile services to be a combination of premium-priced and advertising-sponsored services and predict that some of the operators will launch entirely ad-funded subscription types where all basic communication services are free of charge for end users. Mobile advertising can be applied across a wide range of service types (messaging, browsing, broadcast, gaming) and industry players (operators, portals, aggregators)."

Amdocs

Seth Nesbitt, vice president of Amdocs, said: "Our customer meetings at the show will be focused on the prevailing need for operators to become more like digital lifestyle and media companies and evolve from their traditional 'phone company' role. Amdocs is helping operators enable better customer experiences through speedier and more accurate interaction with suppliers and manage more tailored mobile content and digital advertising programs, which will in turn help them grow revenue. Our news will be focused around how we're doing that and who were doing it with."

Apertio

"Nokia Siemens Networks has recently announced its intention to buy Apertio. It is aiming to complete the transaction this quarter. So, Apertio will be discussing its future. How it will fit into the NSN Converged Core as a new business line and what products will be in its portfolio," said a spokesperson.

"Apertio will also be reinforcing promotion of subscriber-centric networks using an IT-standards based approach (rather than cumbersome hardware) by announcing a stream of global operators as customers."

ARM

"ARM will be demonstrating the technology that will be at the heart of future mobile devices. ARM is making smartphones smarter," said a spokesperson. "We will be demonstrating the next generation of mobile processor (Cortex-A8) and graphics (Mali hardware and software) that will enable exciting new devices. These devices will have sufficient performance to entertain, inform and connect users on the go - with long battery life."

B

Broadcast Mobile Convergence Forum (bmcoforum)

"Following Italy and Finland, five further countries have set up their regulatory framework to enable mobile broadcast business to start in 2008: Austria, France, Germany, The Netherlands and Switzerland," said Prof. Dr. Claus Sattler, executive director of the forum.

"bmcoforum and its members will demonstrate content, services, platforms, devices and technology that enable service providers to offer mobile TV services in 2008. The demonstrations include complete hybrid mobile TV solutions of platforms and devices combining various technologies as 3G, DVB-H, DVB-SH to be used in the upcoming commercial implementations."

C

Cerillion

"Cerillion will be at the show demonstrating its end-to-end pre-integrated CRM and billing solutions on its stand (no 2D65) and showing how users can deploy these solutions to ensure they maximise revenues from new service technology," the company said.

D

Datawind

"We shall be presenting a number of amendments and improvements to the Pocketsurfer 2 at the MWC, including a revised home page and direct text input method. We have also recently reaches agreement with Orange whereby we have integrated Spanish data SIMS in the devices which we shall be showing and giving away to key partners at the congress," said a spokesperson.

"Our main objective at the congress is to meet with mobile operators from around the world to discuss data plans and partnership opportunities with Datawind as we expand the penetration of the Pocketsurfer 2 beyond the initial English language markets."

Dilithium

"Dilithium will be highlighting and demonstrating some of its unique mobile and broadband video applications that are available on 3G mobile devices and the internet. These demos will show the ease of creating attractive, profitable, converged mobile and IP video services for mobile operators and content providers alike and - more specifically - will help operators understand how mobile video services can help them stand out in an extremely competitive and overcrowded space," said Mitch Lewis, senior vice president and general manager of the company's service providers business unit and corporate marketing.

"Dilithium will also be demonstrating its newest technology, which will help drastically reduce the infrastructure and development requirements associated with supplying video across the profligate standards, formats and devices currently being used in the market."

dotMobi

"One thing dotMobi has been addressing this year is the fragmentation issue which has held back the development of mobile content. The mobile handset market is inundated with numerous different makes and models that make the job of content development problematic. Unlike developers of PC-based content who need to address differences between a small number of browsers such as Windows Internet Explorer or Apple Safari, mobile content developers must accommodate the differences among thousands of phones with different display types and dozens of browsers," said a spokesperson for dotMobi.

"As such, dotMobi has been working on a definitive source of device information that will help big companies build better mobile content at a lower cost while small businesses will be able to build mobile sites equal to those of the largest, most sophisticated companies. Everyone wins as better mobile web applications are deployed, and consumers get strong content, which will encourage more mobile data use. dotMobi will be announcing the full details at Mobile World Congress."

F

Flash Networks

"At Mobile World Congress, Flash Networks will be highlighting to operators how they can increase data revenues by unleashing the potential of mobile internet through providing fast browsing and downloads, web to mobile adaptation, safe browsing and smooth video streaming," said Eli Mahal, the company's vice president of marketing.

Freescale

Tom Dietrich, who heads up Freescale's cellular division, said: "We will definitely demonstrate LTE and WiMAX base station equipment. On the LTE side, our technology provides the multi-gigahertz performance, low power operation, and interconnect technologies crucial to support the high data rate air interface and IP packet handling requirements of LTE base stations. We expect this to be a hot topic this year and one of our flagship demos will focus on our end-to-end cellular LTE technology. Additionally, we will demonstrate our multi-core technology, multimedia applications processors and many of our partner companies technologies."

Future Dial

"We will be showcasing the industry's first mobile device content management solutions with a client-server architecture, which is deployed by Tier-1 wireless carriers in Europe and North America. Our solutions enable wireless carriers to provide content transfer, backup, restore, and download services for more than 1,000 handset models at retail stores, cellphone service centers, and wireless carrier warehouses. With a few clicks of the mouse, our solutions quickly and easily transfer all types of private content (audio, video, images, contacts, calendar, messages) from a subscriber's old phone to a new phone," said Bruce Brunger, the company's marketing communications manager.

I

Intrinsyc

"Mobile World Congress will be the venue to see the latest Soleus handsets from our OEM customers from MicroStar International and other leading wireless device makers," said Glenda Dorchak, chairman and chief executive of Intrinsyc Software International. Intrinsyc will showcase Soleus' strength in enabling consumer multimedia solutions and how device makers can use this mobile software platform to rapidly develop differentiated products with rich applications and innovative user interfaces."

Innovision Research and Technology

"The company launched its RFID smart ticketing chip, Jewel five years ago and launched its NFC tag Topaz in 2006, which is mandated by the NFC Forum as the number tag type format. The company is also a member of the NFC Forum and Topaz will be used in the NFC Forum area of Mobile World Congress (Hall 2, D293), to demonstrate how smart posters and smart banners work using NFC readers (mobile handsets)," said a spokesperson for the company.

"Innovision's chief executive David Wollen and business development director Marc Borrett will be at the show to talk to visitors and media about the predicted growth in NFC (ABI has released figures to say 419 million chipsets will ship in 2012) and the many uses of the technology, from cashless payments and ticketing, to smart posters and peer to peer communication."

Check back tomorrow for the second part of the preview.

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