Mobile World Congress 2010 - Day 1 roundup

Departures Board

So after 2 days, 3 airports and 3 airlines, the Temono team finally arrived in Barcelona on Sunday evening.

After a tapas dinner, it was early to bed for all as we had an 8am start on the show ground. It was a busy day of managing press and analyst meetings for our clients, but I managed to get a quick look around the Fira to check out the hot news from the day.

The “Windows Phone”

The only Windows Phone at MWC

The most disappointing news of the day came from Microsoft who launched the “Windows Phone”, which wasn’t Microsoft’s own brand mobile phone as hoped, but just a rename of their mobile phone operating system.

Samsung gives us a Wave

Samsung Wave

After announcing the platform at the end of last year, Samsung launched their first phone on the Bada OS, the Wave, on Sunday evening.

The Wave is really a high end feature phone rather than a smartphone, and probably more accurately fits into the the burgeoning sub smartphone market, which sits between feature phones and smartphones. 2010 is due to see a number of phones launch in this category which is yet to be defined. I’m currently torn between “the not so smartphone” or possibly the “smarter than your average feature phone” or Yogi phone for short. You saw it here first people.

Anyway, judging by the amount of Samsung’s (huge) stand which was dedicated to the Wave, I would say this is a big focus for the handset manufacturer for the near future.

Sony Ericsson EXPERIA X10 Mini Pro

Although it’s still early on in the week, this is the phone of the show for me so far. Running Android with Sony Ericsson’s custom TimeScape user interface and managing to pack a Qwerty keyboard into a tiny package, this is certainly the most interesting Android phone I’ve seen to date and is a very strong contender to replace my excellent HTC Hero. The only downside is it is a little on the thick side, but ain’t it cute?

Tiny

Wholesale Applications Community is not whack

In other (non handset) news, 15 operators today announced they are joining a cross operator application store called the Wholesale Applications Community (or WAC for short). It’s early days, but depending on how well this gets implemented, it could be the operator’s strongest chance yet to cash in on the lucrative applications market which Apple has dominated to date.