BARCELONA—Here’s a smattering of just some of the activities at Mobile World Congress, which kicked off Monday, Feb. 15, and runs through Thursday.
Could this be the year for LBS? Navteq probably hopes so, as this marks the digital mapping company’s eighth visit to MWC. This year, Navteq is showcasing a range of location-focused applications via a variety of customer demos, along with interactive demonstrations and developer tools at its booth. One of its product launches is Enhanced 3D City Models for European markets. The product allows for navigable 3D animation to be generated in real time. Cityscapes appear more authentic and are more useful to pedestrians and drivers with added texture and colors, according to the company.
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LG Electronics and Dolby Laboratories are showing off the first public demonstration of 5.1 multichannel surround sound on a mobile phone using the latest version of Dolby Mobile technology and an LG Android-based smartphone. Announced in July 2008, the strategic collaboration between LG and Dolby already has created 20 mobile phone models with enhanced audio that are either available today or are in development.
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ST-Ericsson is demonstrating a dual-core smartphone platform, with each core running at a clock speed of 1.2 GHz. The demonstration showcases 3D video and Android-based Web browsing running on ST-Ericsson's flagship U8500 platform, which has an embedded dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor. The performance breakthrough, which, the company says, sets a new benchmark for an integrated smartphone platform on a multicore system, will enable handsets to run several graphically-rich applications simultaneously, integrating HD or 3D video and social networking with online map-navigation and augmented reality, for example.
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IBM, which has relationships with carriers far and wide, is at Mobile World Congress to spread the word about its analytics services designed to help service providers reduce costs and cut down on churn. The U.K.’s Tesco Mobile, for one, is improving its customers’ experience by using IBM SPSS predictive analytics software to gain insights into subscriber behaviors and preferences, thereby improving customer retention.
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Movius Interactive is set to talk about several new applications designed to help operators increase revenue and expand market presence. According to Movius CEO Oscar Rodriguez, 2009 was a good year for privately held Movius despite the bad macro economic environment. “Our focus really was on driving applications that would drive higher ARPU and lower churn and increase market share,” he says.
Here are some of the things Movius is showing off: The Virtual Subscriber Service provides people in developing countries with their own personal number for communication on any phone. Movius’ Flex Number Service is geared for those who don’t want to carry two mobile phones but want to keep their private calls separate from their business or general purpose line – which is key for a lot of employees and employers alike.
And here’s one for anyone steamed about getting dropped calls, whether it be in California or Africa. Once dropped, it’s a pain to redial, but Movius’ SnapBack, initially for BlackBerry users, automatically reconnects a call that was disconnected due to a lost signal. Attendees who visit the Movius booth will get the chance to try SnapBack. Note to iPhone users: The app is not available in the Apple App Store.