Mobile World Congress, Awards & (Coming) Microsoft Mobile Services

Wed, 01/21/2009 - 10:08 by Greg Sterling

The Mobile World Congress is coming up in Barcelona, Spain in mid-February. The show is like CTIA in its gargantuan sweep and the barrage of announcements and press that come out of it. ZDNet points to to the nominees for a range of mobile awards in connection with the show.

The list includes some familiar and some more obscure names and companies. Of interest to me are the following categories:

There are many more categories and one could probably argue vigorously with some of the nominations in some of the categories.

Meanwhile Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is going to Keynote MWC (as he recently did CES). There's an expectation of a wide range of mobile announcements, including WinMo 6.5 and a competitor to Apple's flawed MobileMe service, as well as an centralized applications market a la iTunes. 

At CES earlier this month Ballmer made the announcement that Microsoft would become the default search provider for Verizon Wireless in the US in a multi-year deal that includes a range of ad types. We'll have to actually wait until the MWC keynote to see what gets announced this time around.

Finally, in recent weeks, Microsoft executives implied that the number of Windows Mobile phones in the market would be reduced. That makes sense because the proliferation of WinMo devices has partly impaired the development of a strong brand identity, which is now necessary to succeed in the newly, intensely competitive mobile handset market.