The shape of things to come in Barcelona Mobile World Congress 2008
Posted by Dimitrios Matsoulis on February 13, 2008
The Barcelona Mobile World Congress of 2008 is finishing tomorrow, and those that are following events even superficially must have already got the message. Smartphones and mobile operating systems are all the rage, and later in 2008 we are going to see some really cool new models. Here is some facts from the event worth mentioning:
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Microsoft is getting ready for the upcoming mobile battle with Google. It has even gone as far as talking with Nokia about integrating Windows Mobile in some of its phones. It has not worked out so far but who knows…
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Android is coming later this year and prototype demos are springing up with OS features trickling out.
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Microsoft and Sony-Ericsson have reached agreement to combine their OS and hardware in new products. Sony-Ericsson is also participating in Symbian, so I am not sure how well this will go down with Nokia…
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Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6 is looking good and of course nothing new in the congress looked better -in my opinion always- than the Sony-Ericsson XPERIA X1 -pictured. It has a 3-inch VGA (800 x 480) touchscreen, qwerty keyboard, 400 MB of integrated RAM, takes 3.2 megapixel photos and supports 2G/3G networks, Bluetooth, GPS, WiFi, video recording and microSD cards. Anything missing? I do not think so. It is always a major plus to have sexy hardware on which to run your software…
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Of course there was a large number of new model presentations with notably beautiful handsets from Nokia -all its N-series looks gorgeous-, Samsung and LG.
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So far, no news on Motorola’s mobile division sale, it seems that the overlap between competitors is so large that it is difficult to find buyers in the so far mentioned companies.
So is the wait worth for future models? I think yes because after a long brewing period finally it seems that software and hardware are good enough to satisfy our expectations. Laptops are not threatened -still- but with the way things go, I do not think the UMPC idea will take off anywhere soon. Pricing will be the great deciding factor, but with three major operating systems -Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android- asking for attention I think that the time when mobile phones will truly make the jump to mobile computers is getting near…
