Windows Phone 7 may have been the biggest news at Mobile World Congress this year. But the world's biggest mobile-phone trade show had something for everybody, from app stores to solar panels. Here's our take for the what you need to take away from MWC 2010.
MWC (Mobile World Congress)BARCELONA—Windows Phone 7 may have been the biggest news at Mobile World Congress this year. But the world's biggest mobile-phone trade show had something for all 49,000 attendees – cheap phones and solar base stations for African countries, free Google Nexus Ones for Android app developers, and a Duran Duran concert, for instance. Here are some of the themes I found at the show.
Windows Phone 7: Microsoft's comeback
The biggest announcement of the show, of course, was the Windows Phone 7 Series. For the past few years, Microsoft has basically been coasting in the smartphone world, letting their market share dwindle while competitors like Apple and Google innovate.
Analyst Michael Gartenberg has said many times that you should never underestimate Microsoft, because they're rich and they're patient. He's right. Microsoft totally rebooted their mobile OS with Windows Phone 7 Series, a radically new approach that Microsoft will launch with every U.S. carrier (but on AT&T first).
Instead of icons, WP7 has big words and photographs, in bold boxes. Instead of single-use apps, Microsoft uses "hubs," like Zune, Xbox or People, which give you all your gaming experiences, all your media experiences, or all your communication experiences in one place. WP7 phones will all have big, multi-touch screens and high-speed Internet, too.
WP7 doesn't work or look like Apple or BlackBerry or Android or Windows Mobile, for that matter. It looks a little like Zune, as if Windows 7 Phone had swallowed Zune. Zune is just a puzzle piece now.
Windows Phone 7 has one big problem: it's not coming out until "the holidays." (I assume Microsoft doesn't mean Easter.) WP7 looks great, but there will be a new iPhone out by "the holidays." Google Android phones will have seen several upgrades, and Android will have added Adobe Flash by then. WP7 looks great for February 2010, but will it look as fresh in November?
To try to keep people interested, Microsoft is trickling out information. Readers on the comments section of our Windows Phone 7 story have been asking things like whether the OS has multitasking, or whether you'll be able to run Windows Mobile 6 programs. Microsoft isn't saying, because "the holidays" are a long way away and, well, they'll tell us later. How do you keep a geek in suspense?
Sorry, no dumb pipes
As mobile phones become PCs, there's one big difference in their economies: unlike ISPs, wireless carriers call the shots on what we do with our phones.
That's likely to continue, if you believe MWC. Every presentation, it seemed, had a little fillip in it about how "operators" (that's the Verizons or AT&Ts of the world) could customize, exclusivize, differentiate, or own whatever new technology is discussed.
Skype is bound to Verizon's voice network. Samsung's Bada is "operator friendly" - and in fact, Samsung won't even build Bada phones if their operator partners don't like them. RIM touted how operator-friendly the company's bandwidth-sipping BlackBerrys are. Even Google's Eric Schmidt bent a little bit to try to make the operators happy, saying he's not trying to reduce them to being carriers for Google services.
At least the operators are giving us speed. T-Mobile announced its super-fast HSPA+ network at the show, and Verizon and AT&T made a critical step towards their new 4G LTE networks by settling on a common voice protocol for the new system. We're still not sure what mobile users will do with their super-fast connections (it seems to have a lot to do with streaming video) but we'll probably hear more later this year.
Whither Apple?
Apple has loomed over Mobile World Congress for the last few years – never attending, but always setting the agenda. For the past year, Apple has been all about apps – promoting the App Store, telling developers how they can make money in mobile apps, and crowing about their huge catalog and number of downloads.
So MWC went crazy about apps, too. Everyone had to have an app store. Way too many app stores. Operator app stores, manufacturer app stores, and app stores that you'll never want or need or see. An entire hall of the Barcelona convention center was dedicated to the "App Planet" of developers writing apps. Google gave away Nexus One phones at educational sessions.
This is all great. I've been saying phones are the new PCs for years, and PCs are about third-party-developed applications. Moving to a proliferation of third-party apps is just part of the evolution of phones into PCs.
Before you complain about "not being able to get a phone that only makes calls," by the way, companies like Emporia and Vodafone were showing off plenty of inexpensive, voice-only phones - they just weren't the focus of the show.
Anyway, the app-store land rush reminded me of how mobile apps have existed for years, but nobody seemed to pay attention until Apple popularized them. What will Apple do this summer - and will that change the agenda again?
Before the new iPhone comes, everyone else has one more chance to set the pace. We'll learn more at CTIA, the USA's wireless trade show, from March 23-25.
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