Mobile World Congress: Barcelona’s Phone Fest
The BBC tech team will be providing frequent updates to this page throughout Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress to keep you up to date with developments.
Monday 1100 GMT
Nokia chief executive Stephen Elop talked up the new handsets at MWC
The news from Barcelona is coming thick and fast although not all of it is happening on the ground.
Samsung has chosen to launch its new Galaxy S smartphone on March 14 in New York, after apparently being bombarded with requests from US mobile carriers to launch it on American soil.
Looking to markets even further afield, BlackBerry launched it first BlackBerry 10 smartphone in India at a price of 43,490 rupees ($800; £528) while Nokia has refocused on the basic handset market, with a 15 euro (£13) phone.
The Nokia 105, which will go on sale later this quarter, is the successor to the 1280, which sold more than 100 million units, according to the company.
It also revealed lower priced versions of its Lumia handsets.
It is still going to be a tough job for Nokia to catch up with rivals Apple and Google though, think analysts.
“Nokia has only sold 14 million Lumia devices so far – not enough to establish Windows Phone 8 as the third ecosystem,” said Forrester analyst Thomas Husson.
“More challenging for Nokia is to capture high-end market share – in the light of the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy S4 announcement. The two new Lumia devices coupled with the amazingly affordable Nokia 105 device however highlight the massive growth to be expected in emerging markets and the opportunity to target the second wave of smartphone owners,” he added.
Monday 0900 GMT
Rory Cellan-Jones and video journalist Dougal Shaw are heading down to Mobile World Congress to find out how smart cities will help to power the cities of the future. Take a look at the venue before the crowds descend in Dougal’s Tout video.
Monday 0630 GMT
The GSMA – organisers of MWC – predicts mobile operator data revenues will overtake voice revenues globally by 2018. It suggests health-related apps will be one of the biggest draws – and the software could end up saving hundreds of billions of pounds worth of medical costs.
Sunday 1700 GMT
Mozilla’s new mobile operating system gets off to a strong start with news that it has secured 18 mobile operator partners and nine launch markets. ZTE, LG and Huawei are among those on board.
Tony Cripps, principal device analyst at Ovum, is impressed but warns of problems ahead.
“That is a huge achievement for what, in fairness, has looked like an underdog among the plethora of alternative software platforms currently vying to power the so-called ‘third ecosystem’,” he writes.
“Windows Phone, Blackberry 10, and Tizen all look like better bets on the surface. As such, the Mozilla Foundation and its early sponsors, especially Telefonica, deserve considerable credit.
“The real acid test for Firefox OS and its long-term prospects is the quality of the software itself and the user and developer experiences that it fosters. However, it will be difficult to say whether it meets those needs sufficiently until we have seen retail devices. What is clear from the Firefox OS demonstration handsets that we have seen was that they are still some way from being market ready, being both slow and buggy.”
Source:BBC News
