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HK Tech Phooey

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by Victor Cheung, Hong Kong SAR, PRC

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New trends in the mobile industry

Feb 17, 2008 15:08

The World Mobile Congress (WMC) was held earlier last week, from February 11 to 14, in Barcelona, and like past years, a number of new phones dictating new and upcoming trends in mobile phones were featured at the premier mobile event.

To name a few, Samsung launched its F480 (the 2nd-generation Armani phone); LG launched a number of new phones as well and the LG KS20 and the LG KF700 were the main attractions among its newest line. Nokia debuted the all-new N96 which features everything you can ever dream of in a mobile phone.

But the handset that is getting the most coverage, IMHO, is the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1.

From this year's WMC, we witnessed the continual evolution of the touch interface technology. No doubt, the iPhone made a great impact in terms of the touch interface the past year and, together with the introduction of HTC's TouchFLO technology on its HTC Touch, I am sure we will be seeing more touch-enabled phones flooding the market this year. The most exciting ones are the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 which cleverly incorporates the iPhone's cover-flow interface into its phone's user interface (UI), and the Samsung F480 with its newest touch UI codenamed TouchWiz.

Another notable trend that we will be seeing is big name mobile phone manufacturers such as Nokia and Sony Ericsson venturing into Microsoft's Windows Mobile sector.

Sony Ericsson, the fourth-largest maker of mobile phones, announced last Sunday that it will offer its first handsets running on the Windows Mobile software, and the Windows Mobile software will be built into Sony Ericsson's X1, the first in its new Xperia premium line of QWERTY keyboard multimedia phones that will be available in the second half of this year.

As for Nokia, the market leader in manufacturing mobile phones, despite its heavy use of the Symbian software across its newest phone lineup, rumors on a number of technolgy/mobility sites have suggested that Nokia is seriously considering the switch.

At WMC, Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6 was named the best Mobile Enterprise Product or Service at the 13th Annual GSMA Global Mobile Awards. According to the judges' comments, it is the leading platform for business owing to the ease of integration with the Microsoft Exchange infrastructure. For the SMB market in particular, Windows Mobile 6 is an attractive proposition.

These latest trends will surely dictate how the market is going to be heading in the days to come. But no matter what, it will surely be great news to us, the consumers. So watch out for the official launches of these new toys.

Apologies for being away a few weeks as my beloved father passed away early this month. If he did not introduce me to the Apple II back when I was 11, I would not have turned into a tech geek today. For this, I thank him and pray that he may rest in peace.

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About Victor Cheung

A true tech junkie at heart, Victor Cheung has been obsessed with all tech gadgets since his college days. His favorite gizmos span from tablet PCs to UMPC, to PMPs, gaming consoles, mobile phones and anything with WiFi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.0 on it. A newcomer to the blog scene, he started his own quasi-tech blog, The Hong Kong Phooey in October 2006.