The turbulent smartphone era

17/02/10 posted by Annie

The recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona exposed some heavy revolutionary thinking on the parts of the world's largest mobile companies, leaving Apple and Google's impenetrable global social media reign on potentially rocky ground.

Dubbed the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), 24 telco giants such as Signtel, China Mobile, AT&T, Orange and Vodafone seek to create a single, open platform to more easily distribute mobile applications to their collective 3 billion worldwide customers. In a nutshell, it means developers will be able to write apps for a single platform to work on a variety of devices.

The plan is to ultimately free developers from the grips of the multiple application approval processes of Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market. Manufacturers like LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson strongly support the apps initiative. However mastermind of Google's Android platform, Andy Rubin, doubts the new force can pull it off.

In a similar wave, Samsung and Sony Ericsson are putting up a fight against their biggest adversaries, Nokia, Apple and BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion (RIM). In this new smartphone era, Samsung admits they're not doing so well despite being the world's 2nd biggest phone maker. Samsung's new touch-screen Wave will be launched in May and be the first device to use the company's new operating system, Bada. They'll also release five or six other smartphones this year, powered by Google's Android operating system and a few more with Microsoft Windows.

Sony Ericsson, the world's 5th biggest mobile phone maker and a pioneer of the smartphone segment, has lost ground in recent years, with its chief Bert Nordberg saying they'd gone through a "turbulent year". Look out for their launch of Vivaz Pro, which includes high-definition video and uses Nokia's Symbian operating system.

There's also a coupling between Verizon Wireless and Skype. In March, Verizon Wireless smartphones will incorporate Skype, giving users a new way to call around the globe. Now people will be able to make and receive unlimited Skype-to-Skype voice calls to anywhere around the globe, make international calls at Skype Out calling rates, send and receive instant messages to other Skype users and be able to constantly see friends' online presence.

With all these democratic ideals of banding together and moving forward by usurping today's world leaders, it makes you wonder how today's committed users will cope in their unsteady, competitive environs.