Andrey Golub

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The Hot Topics will include-

1. Ubiquitous networks and the path to 4G
2. Competing with the iPhone
3. Entertainment takes center stage at Mobile Backstage
4. Linux in the limelight
5. Mobile banking reality check

Ubiquitous networks and the path to 4G

Operators are still in the midst of upgrading their networks to 3G but vendors are already touting the benefits of LTE, WiMAX and other 4G-type technologies. In fact, a keynote session on Tuesday, Feb. 12 at 2 p.m. will be devoted to "Ubiquitous Networks" and feature speakers such as Carl-Henric Svanberg, CEO of Ericsson and Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm.
Last year we heard a lot about WiMAX, which was surprising since this conference was once a GSM-dominated event. This year we expect to hear more on the business case for WiMAX and how the technology is fitting for underserved areas of the world. "There are plenty of parts of the world without broadband," says Scott Wickware, vice president of carrier networks, marketing and strategy at Nortel. "This is a cheaper way to offer broadband." 

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Competing with the iPhone

Unlike last year's show, which took place a few short weeks after Apple unveiled the iPhone, all is quiet on the handset front leading into the Mobile World Congress. While Motorola mulls whether it should spin off its beleaguered handset business, other phone makers wonder how they can begin to top last year's showstopper.
"One of the lessons of last year learned from iPhone is that there is a new bar for how loud you have to be to cut through the clutter," Compete's wireless research director Miro Kazakoff said. "If there were any likely hit phones coming out at the show this year, the industry would have heard something by now."
The only high-profile launch slated for the show is Nokia's S60 Touch UI, which the company will be demonstrating at its booth. Rumor has it that Nokia will be making use of accelerometers for the user interface--those are the same type of sensors that Apple uses in the iPhone to automatically adjust the screen display from normal to landscape mode. The S60 Touch UI is a testament to the growing number of touch sensitive phones on the market. The feature is close to becoming a requirement on high-end feature phones that look to compete with the iPhone.

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Entertainment takes center stage at Mobile Backstage

The face of mobile content turns ruggedly handsome at Mobile World Congress--Academy Award winner and independent film pioneer Robert Redford will keynote Mobile Backstage, the one-day mobile entertainment conference produced by the GSM Association in collaboration with Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter. The event takes place Wednesday, Feb. 13.
Redford is no stranger to mobile--in late 2006, his non-profit Sundance Institute launched the Sundance Film Festival: Global Short Film Project, an initiative spotlighting three-to-five minute short films made exclusively for screening on mobile handsets. The project was showcased at last year's event in Barcelona.  Also, in January, Verizon Wireless added short-form programming from cable's Sundance Channel to its V Cast Video service.
Redford's Mobile Backstage keynote promises to focus on the potential of the mobile platform as a channel for independent filmmakers to reach a worldwide audience. Mobile Backstage will also spotlight acclaimed actress and director Isabella Rossellini, who will discuss her role in a new series of mobile shorts titled Green Porno--a name no doubt guaranteed to land untold copies of this preview issue in subscribers' spam folders--as well as Black Eyed Peas rapper will.i.am, who will explore the future of mobile music.

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Linux in the limelight

inux enters Mobile World Congress 2008 with all the momentum in the world. First the open source platform reshaped the U.S. software market in late 2007 via web services giant Google's introduction of its Linux-based Android operating system. Next, in the waning days of January 2008, Nokia bid $153 million to acquire Norwegian Linux-based software provider Trolltech, a move the handset kingpin said will galvanize its cross-platform software strategy for mobile devices and desktop applications, enabling development of third-party apps optimized for the Internet, across its device portfolio and on PCs. Just days later, European semiconductor firm NXP and French mobile Linux components supplier Purple Labs announced their joint development of a 3G Linux feature phone boasting video telephony, music playback, high-speed Internet browsing and video streaming--the first of its kind with a price tag under $100. And finally, industry consortium The LiMo Foundation said it will release its first mobile Linux platform in March.

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Mobile banking reality check

If last year was the year of overblown expectations for mobile financial services, then 2008 will be a year of the inked deal but still little progress on consumer uptake, according to senior analyst Emmet Higdon of Forrester Research. Mobile banking and mobile payments are still technologies in search of a problem, which could be just what the industry players are looking to figure out at next week's Mobile World Congress. "People expected mobile banking to take off much more quickly than it has," Higdon said. "People are trying mobile banking services and discovering that it's kind of neat, but it's hard to read transactions on that little, tiny screen." 
Carriers and financial institutions are still trying to figure out what consumers are interested in doing financially on their mobile phones. Forrester's polling suggests that customers, themselves, aren't really sure what they want to do with mobile banking. The problem could be a lack of imagination. Right now, U.S. banks are encouraging users to use the exact same services on their mobiles that they can already use online. "That's fine," Higdon cautions. "But it doesn't make it compelling enough to make a large percentage of their customers to try or adopt these mobile solutions. We are still waiting to see how that experience on the mobile could be different. We are still waiting on that killer app for mobile banking."

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