Top Five Hot Topics at Mobile World Congress 2010

The Top-Five hot topics at the Mobile World Congress this year, according to analysts at Juniper Research, are:

1. Flurry of launches to increase competition in the smartphone space
2. Operators announce Apps Community
3. GSMA embarks on LTE interconnection standards
4. NFC payment trial at Mobile World Congress to presage widespread NFC adoption?
5. Android platform gains critical mass- the rise of the open source OS

Smartphone launches from Samsung, Sony Ericsson, ZTE, Motorola Acer and several others will dramatically increase competition in the smartphone space, says John Levett, Juniper Research analyst.

In the apps market, the launch by 24 mobile operators of a "Wholesale Applications Community" should allow for mobile internet and applications to be downloaded without the potential headache of conflicting technologies, he says.

With LTE now boasting several live roll-outs and as many as 75 build-out commitments, some 40 mobile industry organizations have now backed industry association GSMA’s initiative to standardise the delivery of voice and messaging services for LTE.

A SIM-based mobile payments trial by the GSMA, Samsung, Telefonica, and several partners could herald a new era in the development of mobile payments using near field communications technology.

MWC 2010 also has seen a proliferation of mobile handsets using Google’s Android platform with announcements from Alcatel, Dell, HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and ZTE. that means a higher-profile for open source operating systems overall.

http://www.juniperresearch.com/analyst-xpress-blog/2010/02/17/top-five-hot-topics-at-mobile-world-congress-2010/