Major Announcements from Mobile World Congress – Day 1

Mobile World Congress, the world’s largest mobile phone conference kicked off yesterday in Barcelona where over 1,300 exhibitors were showcasing the latest in mobile technology.

Major announcements included:

Microsoft detailed the launch of its new mobile phone operating system, Windows Phone 7 software. This system has been completely re-vamped in an attempt to re-gain lost market share from Apple and Nokia in recent years. The new mobile OS is built on a series of content “hubs”. The pictures hub, for example, will contain all of the user’s photo albums and video content, and will synchronise with albums stored in Microsoft’s cloud services. (Pc Pro) the company said in a statement that “for the first time ever, Microsoft will bring together Xbox LIVE games and the Zune music and video experience on a mobile phone.” (click here for Gizmodo video)

Nokia has announced its shift to using Intel to power high end phones, tablets, netbooks and similar devices. (Intel), however ARM has promised to bring 40% more power to next-gen mobile devices. (MSN)

Orange will be pushing its high-definition mobile voice service across Europe this year. Orange said “ HD voice will offer the best possible sound quality, especially in a noisy area.” The system uses special codec that boosts quality using existing networks by using speech bandwidth of 50 to 7,000 Hz compared to standard systems using 300 to 3,400 Hz. (IT Pro)

A 27-strong team of mobile firms is teaming up to take on Apple’s App store. 24 mobile operators including: Sony Ericsson, LG and Samsung, as well as Orange and Vodafone are coming together to create Wholesale Applications Community (catchy name hey) (IT Pro)

An array of exciting products have also been revealed at Mobile World Congress yesterday, Samsung unveiled The Wave , its first handset to run on bada OS. Sony Ericsson launched seven new handsets including the Xperia X10 Mini and Xperia X10 Mini Pro. These Mini’s are scaled down versions of the high-end Xperia X10, Sony Ericsson’s much-discussed flagship Android device. (Mobile Choice)

The Puma sports phone

Sony Ericsson's Xperia Mini 10

Vodaphone has launched two new handsets designed to deliver mobile payment services to a whole new market, (ITPro) whilst Motorola has officially released the Motorola Quench. (Know Your Mobile) Interestingly Puma has teamed up with Sagem to create a solar charging, sports phone. (Electric Pig)

We will have more information on Day 2’s big announcements later on today.

Tags: consumer technology

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 10:50 am and is filed under Consumer Technology, Industry, PR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.