Mobile Updates From Barcelona

Mobile World Congress in Barcelona has opened and news is pouring out in every direction.

Windows 7
Microsoft has unveiled Windows Phone 7 which focuses on social-networking, real-time information, and organising contacts and data in to single “hubs”.Joe Belfiore, vice president of Windows Phone, said, “Too many phones are made to look like PCs. We wanted to come up with a user design that was different, that moved beyond the metaphor of the PC.” Windows Phone devices will feature three buttons - Start, Search and Back and be built around six different “hubs”, based on the services that people use most, accessed through the Live Tiles home screen (not a lot different to the Android in my hand there). However Microsoft has enabled users to access and edit Microsoft Office documents on the device.

Microsoft said that Windows Phone 7 Series devices would be available at the end of the year from a variety of handset makers, including Samsung, LG and HTC.

MeeGo or MeGoo or Me Too

Nokia is merging its Maemo N900 smartphone platform, with Intel's Moblin, which is an open source software project, to create MeeGo. Devices are due out this year but who is driving strategy at Nokia and how many operating systems do they want? They clearly are on the back foot and in danger of losing the plot and claim once again that others will join the show. Sounds more like MeGoo than MeToo.

Remember Symbian, the operating system which Nokia took over and made "open source" and failed to convince other manufactures to adopt. However, Google’s Android, has been installed in 27 different handsets from a range of manufacturers.

Wholesale Applications Community
24 mobile operators, including Vodafone, Orange and O2, have joined forces with manufactures such as Sony Ericsson, Samsung and LG to take on Apple's domination of the mobile applications market. Apple have now claimed 150,000 apps and these are certainly creating the difference today with only Google’s Android showing any ability to compete. This new alliance aims to create an open app platform which will enable developers to reach over 3 billion customers.

The Wholesale Applications Community is the latest attempt by mobile phone companies to ensure they are not sidelined by hardware makers and internet companies that reduce the networks to mere billing platforms and networks. However the industry has a poor record of working within an industry consortium."

Andy Rubin, Google's vice president of engineering, remarked that he was sceptical about the potential success of the mobile phone operators in creating their own application platform, "There is always a dream that you could write once and run anywhere and history has proven that that dream has not been fully realised and I am sceptical that it ever will be."

Maybe less WAC and more WACKY

Nokia Ask developers to Hack into N900

We have written about the soon to be launched Nokia N900 phone/netbook /smartphone. Now Nokia have announced a competition to encourage, hackers, designers developers and other creative types to use the devices and become familiar with it. The PUSH N900 project was launched on Sunday with the aim of giving people the chance to “get their hands on, and heads inside, the new Nokia N900 and the Maemo platform.” It offers all opportunity to submit a simple brief to Nokia, detailing how they would hack into and modify the N900 and Maemo in order to connect it to something they cherish. Winners will receive a N900, in addition to support and funding to develop their idea, which will then be showcased in flagship Nokia stores around the world.

The deadline for written, Visual or videoed submissions is the 5th of October and the winners will be announced on the 25th.

We hope that the competitors find it hard or that the enteries close any holes – why because we see the N900 as a potential competitor to the iPhone, Palm smartphone world.

Nokia N900 Enters With Flash

So how many horses does Nokia want to back? It already owns the symbian operating system and has announced the Booklet sub-notebook computing device, which will run on Windows. Now it has announced the interesting N900 internet tablet, which will run on the open source Linux-based Maemo 5 software.

The new 3G device features an ARM Cortex-A8 processor and 1GB of application memory which means many applications can run simultaneously. It also has a high-resolution WVGA touch screen, HSPA and WiFi, 32GB of storage (expandable to 48GB via a microSD card), a 5MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics and fast ARM Cortex-A8 processor (the same chipset the Palm Pre and iPhone 3GS utilise). HSPA and WiFi, 32GB of storage (expandable to 48GB via a microSD card), a 5MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics and fast ARM Cortex-A8 processor (the same chipset the Palm Pre and iPhone 3GS utilise). If you get tired of ther touch screen it also has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Sounds an interesting offer and at around £450 it is priced about righto give the others, including the long anticipated Apple tablet a run for their money.

The switch to Maemo is interesting and enables Nokia to deliver open-source technology that has strong ties with desktop platforms. However the thing that caught our eye is the full support for Adobe Flash 9.4 which could open up many opportunities in the media world of film, video, marketing and online content.