MWC 2010 Barcelona

Here’s what stuck out of the media storm.

Wholesale Applications Community is an effort by operators to offer a standard (neutral) widget/app store framework across a range of phones regardless of make or operating system, and regain some of the control, value add (and profit) recently lost to Apple and Google’s Android. The initiative is backed by an impressive list of the most well known operators from established and emerging markets around the globe, consisting of América Móvil, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, KT, mobilkom austria group, MTN Group, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Orascom Telecom, Softbank Mobile, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor Group, TeliaSonera, SingTel, SK Telecom, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, VimpelCom, Vodafone and Wind, who jointly serve around three billion subscribers, joined by device manufacturers LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson as well as the GSM Association. The alliance will build upon JIL and OMTP BONDI, evolving these into a common standard within the next 12 months. Its challenge, besides catch up with the offering of iPhone and Android platforms, is to innovate as quickly as the platforms driven by a single vendor, and not get stuck in compromise.

They are not alone. Ericsson and Opera announced an app store applications initiative named eStore claiming an inventory of 30,000 applications. With Opera Mobile, Opera Mini and Opera Widgets, the eStore enables operators to provide a branded application store to their subscribers. The eStore concept offers a wide variety of free or premium Opera Widgets, as well as native applications.

OS wars continued: Samsung announced the launch of a new OS platform, bada (which means they might drop Symbian). Microsoft unveiled the new (but not quite ready) Windows 7 Mobile operating system. The first Windows 7 devices will not come out until early 2011. And Intel and Nokia are merging their half-finished Moblin and Maemo software platforms into a unified Linux-based mobile operating system called MeeGo. Android, meanwhile, reigns with product announcements from Alcatel, Dell, HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and ZTE.

GSMA backs One Voice. One Voice is an industry initiative that uses current open standards to define the minimum mandatory set of functionality for interoperable IMS-based voice & SMS in LTE. The scope includes IMS basic capabilities and voice, real-time media negotiation, transport and codec. The One Voice Initiative was formed to support a single, IMS-based voice solution for 4G networks and the GSMA said that it will spearhead the development of domestic and international roaming technology for LTE networks. Work on the GSMA’s roaming technology project is expected to be completed by Q1 2011.

Verizon Wireless bites the bullet and embraces Skype with a circuit-switched relay solution similar to that used by 3 in six European countries since a few years. That means Skype will not congest Verizon’s data bitpipe. Besides 3 and Verizon Wireless, all other US and European carriers still block Skype’s calls, prohibit their customers from downloading Skype’s software, outlaw the use of VoIP services in contract T&Cs, or charge a surplus (T-Mobile and Vodafone in Germany). Skype now has more than 500 million users and handles 12% of all international calls, according to recent data from TeleGeography.

A SIM based mobile payments trial by the GSMA, Samsung, Telefonica, and several partners could herald a new era in the development of mobile payments using NFC (Near Field Communications) technology.