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CTIA Wireless IT Expo 2005

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Earth shattering? No, not really, but read more to see what happened.

Opening Notes: It’s Sunday. CTIA ended Thursday. What happened? The report was done, and for some reason, it wasn’t much of a report. We tried to give it the hype, but, there just wasn’t enough. Friday and Saturday came and went, and it just wasn’t much of a report. It’s not our reporting was bad, it’s simply an utter lack of new content on the show floor. So, we present to you the coldest cell phone expo we’ve covered to-date.

Cingular: Cingular declined to speak with PCS Intel after we began photographing their prototype HSDPA handset from Samsung on display (more in-depth explanations to be provided in our wrap-up report later today).

It’s worth pointing out that Cingular was the U.S. carrier to have a presence at CTIA. All carriers were “recognized” for supporting the expo, but only Cingular had a show floor presence.On a related note, Orange appears to have an interested in the wireless data market beyond other carriers, the European carrier even had a show floor presence through its content approval channels.

UTStarcom: UTStarcom did not allow pictures at their booth, but upcoming devices were not on display to begin with. The CDM-9900 series will return with the CDM-9945, however, it will have no relations with Toshiba, as the 9000 series previously was only reserved for Toshiba units.Upcoming devices such as the CDM-105 (no relation to the CDM-100) were also not on display.

However, UTStarcom did confirm that they should have approval for the release of the Sprint PPC-6600 EV-DO update later this week, and hope to have the update released in all channels on both Sprint and UTStarcom’s web sites later this month.

ESPN Mobile: What? A new product? Yes, ESPN’s announcement of the Sanyo 9000 (MVP) was the only highlight of the expo (along with the free coffee ESPN was serving). We hope to have some much better pictures of the MVP and the 9000 soon.

i-Mate: i-Mate confirmed that their CDMA presence will remain overseas, with carriers such as Telstra. However, they did confirm that they will be releasing their version of HTC’s Wizard, which they will call the kJam. In addition, a Windows Mobile 5.0 version of the popular Jam will be released, sporting double the memory capacity to accommodate for the modified memory system in Windows Mobile 5.Nokia: Nokia had no new products to show, so all we can show are the usually-fuzzy pictures of the Nokia N90 and N91 (the Nokia booth has intentionally poor lighting to detract from pictures taken).

Palm: Palm was very up-front about not saying a word about future products. No mention of a Palm OS Treo 700 (which, our sources confirm will fill the void between Q1 and Q2 2006, after which, Sprint/GSM versions of the 700w will be released), nor were there any demo units of the 700w. We present to you the closest thing to this on the show floor, in all its poorly-marketed glory.
Microsoft: Likewise, Microsoft only showed up to tout the Windows Mobile platform. No new announcements, not even an official product launch of ActiveSync 4, simply a showcase of devices such as the HTC Universal, which, continues to not be launched in the U.S. in either CDMA or GSM/UMTS variants.
Closing Notes: The worst decision ever on the behalf of CTIA was to deploy a multi-point open bar on the day of the show floor’s open. Bad idea. The combination of drunk people with voices so slurred between booze and chewing gum made for gridlock and long lines to get to the people who handled the type of questions we wanted answers to. Bad idea, and we heard more than one CTIA official say “never again”.Bad idea #2 is to move the expo to Los Angeles, which they will be doing next year. San Francisco is a hotspot for new network deployments, demonstrations of emerging technologies such as UMTS with real-world hardware will be much more difficult in LA versus SF. Could this be as bad as MacWorld New York and kill the whole fall expo? We doubt it, but we certainly think it will be a much colder reception next year.

However, it is clear Wireless IT this year was not as big as last year’s show. The expo shrunk a good 25-33% and lacked any new product announcements beyond the Treo 700w, something which actually was not a part of the show.


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