Announcements and news stories coming out of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona are indicating that a vibrant, competitive marketplace for consumers will continue. A tweet from Michael Hennessy pointed me to an interesting article in The Guardian, speaking about Europe’s fall from its leadership in the mobile world. Late in the day, he tweeted a pointer to an announcement that the major Canadian wireless carriers have agreed to provide the lead commercial trial for the GSMA’s OneAPI initiative.
In more news from Barcelona, some of the world’s largest mobile service providers, including all of the major US carriers, have created The Wholesale Applications Community, targetting Apple’s apps store. Twenty-four service providers, with access to 3 billion customers, have signed on, as well as manufacturers Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson. Wind Mobile appears to be the only Canadian carrier to have signed on at this time.
In a Barcelona media event hosted by CEO Steve Ballmer, Microsoft announced Windows Phone 7, delivering a more desktop-like experience for Windows applications. The browser is based on Internet Explorer, so mobile web-surfing might be more comparable to what users are after. Mobile Outlook has many of the functions of its desktop equivalent and it operates on locally cached data to run faster. All Windows Phone 7 devices are automatically Zune enabled and include XBox Live. It puts the PC strengths into the mobile device.
Microsoft has already established hardware partnerships with Qualcomm, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba, HTC, HP, Dell andĀ Garmin Asus. Special service provider relationships were announced with AT&T and Orange for distinctive applications development. No Canadian service providers were announced in the list of initial partners: AT&T, Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange, SFR, Sprint, Telecom Italia, TelefĆ³nica, Telstra, T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone. But, Windows Phone 7 enabled handsets aren’t scheduled to hit stores until the Christmas 2010 shopping season, so we can expect Canadian partners to sign on before then.
Harry Patz, Microsoft’sĀ North America VPĀ for theĀ Communications Sector will be speaking atĀ The 2010 Canadian Telecom Summit on June 7. Ā Microsoft will be hosting an Innovation Showcase atĀ the event. Early bird rates expire at the end of February. Have you registered yet?
If you want to get a closer look at the Windows Phone 7 Series, visit this link.