The dark side of the Mobile World Congress 2011

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Everybody always wants to know the big story out of a major conference like Mobile World Congress, which ended last week in Barcelona.  

I can't purport to be the sage who knows for certain the big story for an event where 50,000 visitors attended, with more than 1,500 vendors showing off wares amid numerous press conferences and interviews. But I'll give it a try.

My colleagues and I noted many new smartphones and tablets with a heavy emphasis on Android machines. For the most part, those new smartphones and tablets seemed little more than variations of earlier versions announced at CES in January or in recent weeks, all of them basically still being reactions to the Apple iPhone smartphone or the Apple iPad tablet.

Saying that doesn't mean that Apple does everything right, but the updates by Apple competitors focus mainly on multi-core processors or bigger or smaller screens.  To vastly generalize, most of the competing smartphones are pushing above 4-inch screens, while the tablets seem to be either about 7 inches or nearly the 9.7-inch iPad size, some going above 10 inches.  (For smartphones, I liked the Samsung Galaxy S II smartphone a lot, based on a quick look and feel, but confess that I didn't get to play with most of the others announced.)

Instead of focusing so much on new smartphones and tablets at MWC, I heard and reported on some frankly disturbing comments by vendor executives, especially from Research in Motion but also AT&T, Nokia and Microsoft.

RIM's  Hampus Jakobsson, a director of strategic alliances for RIM and former head of TAT, a cutting-edge interface design company, gave a 15-minute address where he criticized smartphones, tablets and other devices for interrupting us too much, keeping us from interacting with  our communities of workers and friends.  He even suggested that maybe RIM devices shouldn't have games running on them. 

"We're not talking to each other, but talking to devices," Jakobsson said.

It almost seemed as if Jackobsson were setting up RIM as the device maker that would somehow use its BlackBerry smartphones and its coming PlayBook tablet as a kind of interruption gate-keeper or administrative assistant. 

Maybe in the future we will set our devices to partially shut off and automatically guard against interruptions when we enter a certain room like a boardroom, conference area or movie theater or when we decide to set aside time to talk to a spouse, a child or a boss. We can do that ourselves manually today, but we don't always.

It would be easy enough to pre-set a phone to detect a location where an intimate or important conversation should take place, with a voice call sent to voice mail or all texts and e-mails given some sort of answer with a priority given to certain information to pass through something serious, such as a fire in the building.

RIM has a lot of experience with enterprise workers, and uses its BlackBerry Enterprise Server to help IT shops guard against unwanted apps and uses on company devices. BES is also an effective way to wipe a device clean if it is lost, so that valuable corporate data is not stolen.  The issue of company policies on personal property has become more complex as RIM and other vendors see more workers bringing their own devices to work, where company information can be stored but where the IT shop has no automatic right to access.   

Given RIM's history in the enterprise, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Jakobssen would worry about how to keep devices from interrupting us from important tasks.  But my main reaction to his thesis is that most consumers of today's smartphones and tablets are really quite in love with the technology itself, both their hardware and the ability to download apps and interact with them.  Yes, they do take up our attention, especially for younger users, and consumers seem totally obsessed with them, but is that any different from the American consumer's obsession with the automobile?  You see people wanting to sit in an exciting sports car, and to be driving the car for the comfort and fun it represents, not just to have it as a functional alternative to taking the train or bus.  

I don't see any vendor slowing down the incessant rollout of new smartphones and tablets, trying to find the magic pricepoints and service deals that will attract the most buyers. RIM might be coming to grips with its declining market share with smartphones and fishing about for a new marketing appeal with the "interruption" theme (if it becomes a theme), but it probably won't be very successful in doing so unless RIM has some pretty amazing ideas for cool new devices that also control interruptions.

The same could be said for Microsoft, which has launched Windows Phone 7 on the marketing and TV ad theme that its interface allows a smartphone user to get into applications and out again with minimal time and trouble, so that we can all get back to our lives and the people in our lives. (Their ads are cute and do resonate.)

Still, I personally haven't found a Windows Phone 7 smartphone from HTC, the Surround, that I'm using on a review basis all that much faster to use than other smartphone devices I've owned or tried.  The maps functionality was amazing and useful in Barcelona for finding meeting places and restaurants, but the Windows Phone 7 active tiles for people and other groupings on the home screen just seem, well, confusing.  Microsoft seems to be trying to attract the younger, socially connected ultra-multi-tasker, while purporting to also put their lives more in their control.  I don't know whether that capability lessens the phone's control over one's life or just adds to it.  The jury is still out on whether that concept matters that much.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at CES introduced a coming upgrade to Windows Phone that would  add MORE capabilities to the phone.  If you can connect a Windows Phone gamer in XBox Live to a gamer using Kinect in a living room, as Ballmer introduced, you have arguably added a social connection, but something in me thinks Jakobsson would call it, instead, an interruption. (Unless your main object in life is gaming.)

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop spoke several times at MWC, with a striking number of references to the sophisticated and sleek hardware design elements that future Nokia devices running Windows Phone will have, given the new Nokia-Microsoft partnership. I kept wondering if the partnership will produce winning, cool and exciting designs that allow users to do more and more with a Windows Phone smartphone, or if they will be phones that give users more control over their lives or both.  Maybe the two themes aren't contradictory and maybe it ultimately doesn't matter.  

AT&T's CTO John Donovan also spoke at MWC, introducing the notion that personal information needs to be cloud-based and that there will be fewer devices carried by users in coming years. We will be able authenticate on a friend's device and activate all our contacts and other information in the cloud, he said.  While he may not have intended it, his comment seems to repudiate the value of all the new devices that are shown regularly at all the mobile and wireless shows and that AT&T sells every quarter.

Maybe we are eventually going to see fewer devices and devices that give us more control of our lives, but I am not predicting that Samsung, HTC, Motorola, Apple and even RIM, will want to sell fewer devices for many years.  It is also safe to predict that device makers will try to make it possible to do as much as we can on smartphones and tablets and other devices over ever-faster networks.  If that causes confusion and chaos for sellers and buyers alike, it will, and we will all simply adjust.

At the close of MWC, I had a simple dinner with a man and a woman from Montreal, both reporters, and their roommate in a rented Barcelona apartment who is a designer from Hungary.  The man from Hungary was in his mid-30s and only gave his name as Roman. He (naturally) asked me what was the BIG story from MWC.  I, and my reporter friends, started to describe all the things one could do with quad-core processors announced for new smartphones running over faster LTE networks.  But he seemed unimpressed, saying, "Why do I need a quad core?  I just want to put my phone in my pocket and keep it quiet. All the phone designers just seem to be selling to 17 to 25 year olds."

So maybe Roman should meet Jakobbson.  But I think the other 95% of the world will still be excited by the iPhone 5 come June, the same way many of the teenagers in my high school liked the latest Malibu, Corvette or Mustang. Nobody could afford to buy those cars, but they wanted them.

Congress tinkers with Internet regulations

If you were wondering, as I was, that in Washington planned to do something to protect the interests of individuals and companies that use Internet services--rather than ones that sell them--the answer is descended from Campidoglio Friday: none.

Friday the Republican-dominated House has approved a bill that included a provision prohibiting the FCC by using its budget to ensure compliance with the rules concerning Internet of government funding.

The FCC ruled last December are ridiculously weak and favourable for telcos who are the backbone of the Internet. At least, make the case that the FCC should be able to regulate ISPs, if only to ensure that consumers and businesses using the Internet legally can do it according to their own desires, rather than on the basis of their policies Hobbes Internet provider.

There is a role that the House you recognize immediately, however.

Among the 67 amendments that tacked on to the Government Finance bill include many who prohibit federal agencies to spend the money that Congress is giving them.

It does not directly counter the Obama health care plan, but deny the salaries to employees of the Government to take him out, or agencies to fund programs to make it work, for example.

They prohibit the Department of Defense to finance political parties for the defense of senior officials. But prohibit expenditures to apply regulations of pollution of air and water regulations, mining or for carrying out the inspections and regulation of food supplies.

Prohibit expenditures for things that are issues of bumper sticker for the Conservatives, as the Intergovernmental Panel on climate change--which is responsible for the creation of scientific assessments on global warming that many conservatives regarded as false as evolution and to the rent or the restructuring of the United Nations

Judged by the principle that the Government should have no role in ensuring that its citizens have access to clean air, water and food that is relatively unpoisoned, makes perfect sense to tell you that the FCC should not have any role in regulating the industry that was created to regulate.

ISP Gone Wild?

The company that built and own the backbone of the Internet are mainly suppliers of telecommunications--which But Bell anti-consumer monopolistic behavior made it impossible for clients even use a phone sold by a third party, let alone obtain services But Bell herself has not provided.

FCC's right to regulate was based on the enormous resources that has benefited from AT&T (and other telcos and cable companies) after AT&T was demolished.

The wires as well as costly phone and Internet service stream bump into public lands benefit from priority granted by the Federal Government, were often paid directly from funding to extend telephone service in rural America. Communications that run through them are regulated under federal law, as letters or packages transported by the U.S. Postal Service.

So saying the FCC should not be able to regulate anti-competitive behaviour on the Internet because communications are in the form of data instead of voice--even though both are often very same cables, or at least those held by the same--is circular and contradictory.

Not that the regulations themselves are so great. The FCC pussy longipes around the whole issue for years before issuing regulations are based largely on suggestions from the telcos.

Theoretically create a level playing field by the carriers prohibited by block or impede traffic from competitors, but allow you to manage your network "reasonable," meaning block or impede traffic from competitors, in order to keep their networks running up to speed.

Theoretically, Comcast should be prohibited from limiting traffic videos from Netflix just to make sure your video-on-demand is more attractive to consumers. In fact, any traffic from outside qualifies to be managed, as Comcast can continue its policy of long years of slowing traffic as it goes through the infrastructure of Comcast.

That seems to be primarily a matter of consumer and one that could get you more if you were at home a Comcast Subscriber (in which case you would have a lot of reason to be annoyed).

Applies to business Internet connections, as well, however, including the mobile networks that are almost completely exempt from even the weak FCC regs already released.

Bandwidth needs attention

Carriers are running full tilt to expand their networks of mobile and attract new customers by cash on the Mania/iPad/iNeed-another-Wireless-device iPhone, so you're adding, subtracting not speed. In a year if growth slows, mobile data begin swamping the existing networks or are business customers aren't buying services with the highest margins, which are free of butterfly back.

If you want to buy a certain amount of bandwidth used by Verizon mobile and other providers of mobile VoIP, VPN, security, data or other services, would be free to say no. Or charge you if you were using its services in order to run concurrent versions somewhere else.

Not that Verizon would squeeze customers for a few dollars extra using dirty tricks like that, of course.

With no permanent regulate the Internet, the FCC may not be able to respond to situations like this, as it did with the Verizon apparently intentional creation of a revenue stream from "bad data costs."

In addition to providing much of the input for net neutrality regulations the FCC loopholed, Verizon is suing the FCC in Federal Court to try to determine the law that the FCC has no jurisdiction over capacity to gouge customers Verizon online.

If the Senate approves the bill, House financing or fails to remove net-neutrality amendment, the FCC could it also be able to pay lawyers to defend in court the right to do the job already is, let alone adding Internet explicitly his portfolio.

Washington D.C. Circuit Court, which ruled in the past in favor of telephone operators, will be the only thing standing between those who use the Internet and an era of predation laissez-faire full Internet providers.

Anything you do online should have been in accordance with public policy set by your ISP and the ISP that you connect (all).

Sure it would be better, the House would agree, because the Government would be outside the regulatory activities of the Internet.

Because public policy established by the company with a financial interest to either allow or deny the right to do what you want online is more fair than rules created by an elected Government whose goal is supposed to be serving and protecting the people who elected him.

Kevin Fogarty writes about enterprise to ITworld. Follow him on Twitter @ KevinFogarty.

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Warm, powerful smartphone tablets: Mobile World Congress 2011 begins officially

Largest largest wireless telecommunications show in the world, Mobile World Congress, is only the beginning here in Barcelona, Spain, where this week, dozens of new handsets and tablets will make its debut. Every February, thousands of journalists, people in the industry and enthusiasts gather at the Fira de Barcelona to find out what the hottest upcoming smartphones, tablets and apps will be in the year to come.

Before the show officially kicked-off also Sony Ericsson has already announced his game of Xperia phone (aka the "Playstation"), the game Samsung unveiled the Galaxy card 10.1 smartphone's Galaxy II and LG announced a 3D smartphone and Tablet PC. We are looking forward to seeing more tablets, possibly including one from HTC and of course more phones 4 G with dual core processors. The show officially opens today and runs through Thursday.

(See: adapter Samsung Galaxy 10.1: first look and Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Gaming Phone: Hands On)

Most news from Mobile World Congress Europe impacts before and the United States at the end. For example, last year HTC has introduced a new line-up of Android phones that debuted in Europe in the first place, but then came to the United States under several different names and slightly tweaked specifications.

But the show is not entirely Europe-centric; some really big news that has affected the entire industry have been announced here. Two years ago, the second Android phone, the HTC Magic (known as the myTouch States) made her debut, and last year, Microsoft announced its new Windows Phone 7 operating system.

Mobile World Congress draws people, as well as companies from around the world. For example, in a Japanese aircraft carrier Docomo occur, RIM Blackberry and Ireland-based developer app. In terms of scale Mobile World Congress is great about how CES--except for just about every stand is a showcase something mobile-connected.

LG will make an announcement this morning and HTC will hold their press conference tomorrow morning. Check back here for exciting news from both of these companies as well as more news and hands-ons straight from the show floor.