3GSM: The future's bright. The future's crustacean...

It's all in the can from Cannes

After several days trudging around Cannes, Tony Hallett looks back on some of the big themes and lesser known goings on at this year's 3GSM World Congress… As one exec from an equipment maker told me, the big theme at this year's show may well have been that there wasn't one. Last year, everyone was going mad for MMS. It now seems something strange may well have found its way into the canapés - that's the only thing I can think of to explain such misplaced enthusiasm, even if a few companies are doing exciting things with messaging these days. The UK's Magic4 is one such player. Demos this writer showcased film clip downloads and instant messaging (IM) over mobile. They looked encouraging, if far from a silver bullet for operators. Indeed, IM is seemingly made for mobile. Since it is dependent on presence - a word we'll all be hearing a lot more of in coming months - and mobile devices are normally on or about you, the future seems bright. Problem is, who wants to be contactable for their every waking hour? Some of the mobility-heads at this year's show might be among them but we hope they have finally learnt not to base their businesses on their atypical lives. Which all means managing oh-so-personal mobile devices becomes all-important, changing user profiles on the fly, for example, to accept different forms of communication from different people at different times. The newly combined LogicaCMG, with experience in messaging infrastructure - SMS certainly, MMS increasingly - realises the mobile IM conundrum. Location-based services (LBS) didn't raise its head above the crowd at the show, yet LBS could prove key to workable mobile IM. Imagine the scenario: as you move nearer home at the end of the day, and lo - work colleagues' buddy lists show you are now no longer contactable. "Operators have got to tie in [mobile IM] to what is relevant for a person," said Steven van Zanen, VP market development, LogicaCMG Wireless Networks. Annoying ads popping up as you walk past a Burger King may not be the way forward - helping an end user manage their device might be. And it was good to see manageability of devices and communications get some attention this year. There is still a reluctance by corporate IT managers to want to integrate PDAs, smart phones and related back end messaging software into their networks. The likes of Microsoft, PalmSource and Symbian now know this. Talking of some of the big names, the consensus is that Symbian and friends shaded the crucial perception stakes against Microsoft, with Palm perhaps staying where it started. The positive PR of Samsung investing in Symbian (it had previously been a licensee only) out-spun Microsoft PocketPC and Windows Smartphone 2002 advances with operators and partners such as Intel and - look, it's them again - Samsung. But enough has been said on those subjects for now. Not hogging column inches but still overshadowing such get-togethers with their awnings and marketing clout are veteran suppliers such as Alcatel, Lucent and Nortel. Pascal Debon, Nortel Wireless Networks president, presented to assembled journos a healthier company, no longer haemorrhaging employees and cash. Most entertaining was his refuting 'five wireless myths'. (And no, one of them wasn't that there is no 3G spot.) Of the industry's big individuals, outgoing Vodafone CEO Chris Gent, was honoured with a GSM Association industry oscar, while Vodafone Live! won a prize - its take up has been rapid across several countries - as did the related TV commercials. You know, they're the ones with the camera-friendly Beckham and the not-so-telegenic Michael Schumacher. Meanwhile NTT DoCoMo head honcho Keiji Tachikawa took the podium to talk mainly about m-payments and his company turning phones into wallets later this year. Despite the ongoing success of the proprietary i-mode in Japan - 36 million users and counting, figures i-mode operators in the West even combined can only dream about - it seemed he spent a lot of time talking up DoCoMo's 3G service. It has, in short, been a flop so far, especially when compared to KDDI's 3G launch, based on the alternative CDMA2000 standard. But 3G success isn't all about technology. Hutchison has over recent weeks pre-registered more people in the UK and Italy than DoCoMo has amassed in 18 months or so. How many stay on as full customers remains to be seen. Qualcomm was again in town, all guns blazing. Its current literature on operators of every hue using its brand of 3G remains impressive. It is also still seeking to convert GSM carriers in Asia to CDMA2000, via GSM1x. Did Qualcomm get its foot in the door of any European operators - all officially committed to the competing W-CDMA, also known as UMTS - with GSM1x? "No," was the simple answer. "If you even talked about CDMA2000, the meeting was over," said Qualcomm SVP marketing Jeff Belk. Despite Europe and many other areas not directly backing Qualcomm's 3G standard, the irony is it can't wait for operators to get going with W-CDMA - not only does it own crucial CDMA patents on which it will make money but it will sell 3G chipsets to phone manufacturers. Qualcomm has been successful in China, selling to China Unicom, but that country is the "absolute priority" for Motorola, which made a number of announcements this year. A variety of styles of new handsets, reference designs, other technological advances - they were all unfortunately overshadowed by its backing of Linux, mainly for the Chinese market. And so the whispering: if Samsung is lining up behind Symbian - in which Motorola is a major stakeholder - why is this US vendor hedging its bets in the other direction? Bob Schukai, Motorola 3G programme director, told silicon.com: "We will do Symbian [phones] when we need to. It absolutely will happen. But we wouldn't count out any other options, not even Microsoft. We must listen to what operators and consumers want." There were more innovative designs this year than ever before. One which caught the eye, but certainly not for lightness, was Danger's 'hiptop' device. It has been taken up by T-Mobile in the US and, with no marketing, has been in demand in the five months since launch. It just feels so good to use, both in terms of user interface and build. As with many other devices now, it has an attachable camera, in its case innovatively fitting in the headset socket so it can be rotated. But there is a feeling that clamshell designs may win the day. SonyEricsson has been showing off its first such model, and with the success of Vodafone Live!'s handsets and most of the camera phones in the Far East, many a pundit is wondering whether the future is crustacean. And the final mentions must go to a specific new phone and a general industry observation. We like Siemens' new, high-end SX1 - but it sounded like everyone was speaking about the Essex One - wrongly jailed, but you can bet we're campaigning. And the newly appointed board of the venerable GSM Association convened just in time to issue a statement along the lines of 'the industry must improve time to market'. You don't say.