This was a very interesting Mobile World Congress. And not actually in terms of devices; although we saw some special stuff, there was nothing to top the hardware inside Motorola’s dual-core Tegra 2 Xoom and Atrix announcements at CES last month.
But the show was certainly rather more interesting in terms of the strategy and positioning of the various mobile chip and operating system players.
In terms of hardware, the LG Optimus 3D was of great interest, the Samsung Galaxy S2, Galaxy Tab 10.1 and LG Optimus Pad superb, while HTC’s hardware disappointed with no dual-core (although it surely won’t be long) and the specs of the HTC Flyer were a letdown – unless it can hit a stupidly low, iPad-bashing price point, of course.
If you’d any doubt about it before, Android 3.0 is huge. Honeycomb is, of course, where it’s at but the openness of Android has helped it become the mobile ecosystem that accepts all comers.
And that means that everybody from never-heard-of bit-part players through to Samsung to LG to Dell to Nvidia is talking up the OS. All had massive Android branding everywhere.
The Android stand itself was something to behold, with its own slide (yep, you read that right) and huge numbers of partners demoing their wares. Android is here to stay and Honeycomb especially is seriously grade A. It feels good. It looks good. And it works wonderfully.
We also like HP’s webOS. But HP will have to be careful it doesn’t get crushed under the Android juggernaut. And that’s before you think about the BlackBerry PlayBook.
Once again, despite its promises to the contrary at CES, Intel was a footnote at MWC 2011.
What about MeeGo?
Could it be that we we were going to see a MeeGo-powered N9 at MWC before the Microsoft Windows Phone deal was signed? We think so; at CES we got the distinct impression it was planning to announce a device here in Barcelona.
Intel may keep saying that it’s serious about smartphones and tablets but come on – show us the partners, show us the devices.
Why the urgency? Because the performance that ARM and its partners like Qualcomm, Nvdia and Texas Instruments are talking about shows epic promise over the next few years.
Tegra 3, future Snapdragon and OMAP 5 all look so good, while looking further on, versions of ARM’s Cortex-A15 design will undermine Intel’s Atom and Core still further – it supports the Windows DirectX 11 graphics platform for when the OS becomes ARM-compatible.
At the show Intel staged a preview of Medfield, its 32nm mobile processor. But, as with Intel’s previous mobile announcements, there was no partnership to talk of – only the mention that it was “sampling to customers.”
But who? Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president of Intel’s Ultra Mobility Group, showed a prototype Android phone (nope, not MeeGo) packing the processor, but it was a tease – it could have been the Aava Mobile handset that has been mooted – but again there was no partner announcement.
Intel says it will continue with MeeGo on its own, but it surely won’t make an impression on the market and could very well go the way of Symbian, the phone OS with no summer wine left. Nobody is mourning good old Symbian, the phone OS we’ve all used and, at one point, cherished.
Nokia and Microsoft
The Nokia QT stand looked rather like the HD DVD stand did at CES a couple of years ago – completely deserted.
Indeed, it was interesting to see that everybody was mentioning the Nokia-Microsoft deal when talking about the industry’s direction and, in terms of sheer numbers of device shipments, we think we’ll see Windows Phone really start to be the third mobile OS of choice.
It helps that Windows Phone is terrific to use – when Microsoft said that 93 per cent of people that bought Windows Phones were really pleased with them it might have been PR bluster but we can well believe it’s true.
The Windows Phone ecosystem will get better and better. It shows a softer side to Microsoft, one that’s willing to learn and work together rather than dictate. But it’s Android that’s the mobile OS powerhouse.
But the show was certainly rather more interesting in terms of the strategy and positioning of the various mobile chip and operating system players.
In terms of hardware, the LG Optimus 3D was of great interest, the Samsung Galaxy S2, Galaxy Tab 10.1 and LG Optimus Pad superb, while HTC’s hardware disappointed with no dual-core (although it surely won’t be long) and the specs of the HTC Flyer were a letdown – unless it can hit a stupidly low, iPad-bashing price point, of course.
If you’d any doubt about it before, Android 3.0 is huge. Honeycomb is, of course, where it’s at but the openness of Android has helped it become the mobile ecosystem that accepts all comers.
And that means that everybody from never-heard-of bit-part players through to Samsung to LG to Dell to Nvidia is talking up the OS. All had massive Android branding everywhere.
The Android stand itself was something to behold, with its own slide (yep, you read that right) and huge numbers of partners demoing their wares. Android is here to stay and Honeycomb especially is seriously grade A. It feels good. It looks good. And it works wonderfully.
We also like HP’s webOS. But HP will have to be careful it doesn’t get crushed under the Android juggernaut. And that’s before you think about the BlackBerry PlayBook.
Once again, despite its promises to the contrary at CES, Intel was a footnote at MWC 2011.
What about MeeGo?
Could it be that we we were going to see a MeeGo-powered N9 at MWC before the Microsoft Windows Phone deal was signed? We think so; at CES we got the distinct impression it was planning to announce a device here in Barcelona.
Intel may keep saying that it’s serious about smartphones and tablets but come on – show us the partners, show us the devices.
Why the urgency? Because the performance that ARM and its partners like Qualcomm, Nvdia and Texas Instruments are talking about shows epic promise over the next few years.
Tegra 3, future Snapdragon and OMAP 5 all look so good, while looking further on, versions of ARM’s Cortex-A15 design will undermine Intel’s Atom and Core still further – it supports the Windows DirectX 11 graphics platform for when the OS becomes ARM-compatible.
At the show Intel staged a preview of Medfield, its 32nm mobile processor. But, as with Intel’s previous mobile announcements, there was no partnership to talk of – only the mention that it was “sampling to customers.”
But who? Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president of Intel’s Ultra Mobility Group, showed a prototype Android phone (nope, not MeeGo) packing the processor, but it was a tease – it could have been the Aava Mobile handset that has been mooted – but again there was no partner announcement.
Intel says it will continue with MeeGo on its own, but it surely won’t make an impression on the market and could very well go the way of Symbian, the phone OS with no summer wine left. Nobody is mourning good old Symbian, the phone OS we’ve all used and, at one point, cherished.
Nokia and Microsoft
The Nokia QT stand looked rather like the HD DVD stand did at CES a couple of years ago – completely deserted.
Indeed, it was interesting to see that everybody was mentioning the Nokia-Microsoft deal when talking about the industry’s direction and, in terms of sheer numbers of device shipments, we think we’ll see Windows Phone really start to be the third mobile OS of choice.
It helps that Windows Phone is terrific to use – when Microsoft said that 93 per cent of people that bought Windows Phones were really pleased with them it might have been PR bluster but we can well believe it’s true.
The Windows Phone ecosystem will get better and better. It shows a softer side to Microsoft, one that’s willing to learn and work together rather than dictate. But it’s Android that’s the mobile OS powerhouse.
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