We have just published series of reports from Barcelona, where the world’s largest congress devoted to mobile markets and technologies took place, showcasing the latest products and attracting the highest ranking specialists of the industry. It’s a key event for the whole world of telecom technologies. A few years ago it was conducted in the French city of Cannes, though later due to a number of reasons it was moved to Spain. This article is a recollection of our experiences outside the exhibition halls, covering something more than just the specificity of mobile products. By the way, the organizers themselves rejected the traditional core 3GSM orientation, adopting a wider scope of the industry.

 

 

Barcelona is the second most populated Spanish city after Madrid; it is the capital of the Catalonian autonomous district and the province of Catalonia, the country’s largest industrial and trade center and a place attracting tourist crowds from all around the Europe. The city’s population is 1 593 075 inhabitants (according to the 2005 census), making it the tenth most populated city of the European Union. The suburban areas add another 4 667 136 people to this count.

 

January and February are traditionally the coldest months in Spain, over the course of the exhibition the air temperature outdoors was balancing around 15 °C, cooling down the people’s nerves, which was noted by one of our reporters as ‘beneficial for the business relations’. The business suits flashed by like a black and white mass looking a bit alien against the background of Spanish scenery, some of the stands marked with the strict notes of prohibition warning against recording videos unless you’re an accredited reporter. The taxis were really nice to travel across Barcelona, though the local trains were still more of an impression – the cliffs and sea are quite an admirable scenery to watch while riding by, the air filled with lounge or classical music playing right in the carriages.

 

   

The magnificent city of Barcelona is thriving with sights and places of interest. The most impressive of them, evidently, is the Sagrada Familia cathedral. Gaudi was unable to finish the edifice before his death, now the authorities are gradually completing the great Spaniard’s job. The local aquanarium is one of the best worldwide, featuring a wide variety of sea species. 

We noted out that the organizers of the exhibitions avoided engaging too many pretty girls as living ads, seemingly because the serious atmosphere of the international business event, where the characters of this kind could repel the potential clients. Due to the same reasons, the number of shows was minimized – the exhibition eventually takes on corporative looks. We were luckier outdoors running across idle girls, dozens of them! Probably, due to the specificity of the place.

  

 

  

Flashing back on the exhibition events, we were surprised with the abundance of Samsung advertising materials facing the visitors from every corner, while Motorola seems to have vanished completely from the banner. To our opinion, the most interesting products announced were Nokia N96, SonyEricsson XPERIA X1 and Samsung Soul, to a lesser extent – LG KF600. Motorola failed to impress the public, only showcasing the ROKR E8 and RIZR Z10 models which had already been presented in Las Vegas. The biggest number of novelties were announced by Samsung – a total of eight! In this year, the company are planning to sell more than 200 million handsets. Considering their latest marketing strategy, such an estimation seems quite real.

Sony Ericsson W910i scored the Year’s Best Product award in the Global Mobile Awards 2008 ceremony. The jury ignored the prices, otherwise the final judgment will be less ambiguous. However, at the exhibition the Swedish-Japanese alliance presented a number of really balanced solutions, in particular a number of UIQ candy bars. The S60 Touch device available at Nokia’s stand was another big surprise. We are already preparing an article reviewing in detail this new member of the Symbian product family, hope you will like it. A party arranged by Samsung at Opium Mar crowned the pressmen’s journey, offering a wild night styled after the national spirit.

 

 

We chose a Nokia N82 to accompany us in our travels. This phone combines a powerful camera, Wi-Fi and support for viewing and editing Office documents and archives, all inside a compact and durable body. The choice proved to have been perfectly justified, for Barcelona is rich in free and semi-free access spots – you just install Fring, then you can freely converse through Skype or only charged negligible amounts of money simply incomparable to the costs at which service comes in the roaming area of your native carrier and even lower than the local carriers’ prices. The availability of phone-to-web blogging capability is another nice addition found in N82. One of the company’s officials admitted that the model is so far the most balanced solution in the whole portfolio despite all the recent novelties.