Other people seemed to have similar thoughts as well. In years past, CTIA’s been a massive show with all sorts of news coming out of it. This year? Not so much. The content and entertainment companies that had made their presence felt before were largely invisible, along with anything else consumer-focused. Handset announcements were minimal, and a lot of things that had made a lot of noise in years past (mobile TV, for instance) were pretty quiet.

So what’s changed? I suspect the cost of the show, coupled with the current economic state of things kept a lot of companies out. I also think that a lot of companies are choosing to go to CES or MWC instead of CTIA; while many other small companies are eschewing big trade shows altogether, perhaps in favor of smaller events like Over the Air in London or Web 2.0 in SF.

But I think perhaps the biggest reason for the current state of CTIA is that it’s a reflection of the current US mobile market. CTIA is an operators’ trade group, and this is their show. And those operators are the ones currently making money in the US mobile market. So CTIA gets dominated by people clamoring for operators’ spending: network gear vendors, distributors and retailers and so on.

If you were at CTIA, or just following what came out of it, I’m interested to know what you think — and what you think of the future of events like these in the future.

DoubleTwist aims to make sharing media as easy as using email, where compatibility problems generally don’t exist. You send somebody an email, and they receive it, regardless of what device or service they’re using. Contrast that to the world of content: copy protection and a mess of formats make sharing files, even among a user’s own devices, a headache.

The upshot of DoubleTwist for mobile is that it takes the fuss out of syncing. Assuming you have a compatible device, you connect it to your PC, and sync your media to your heart’s content. You don’t have to worry about file formats, DRM, or other issues — the application does all the thinking and heavy lifting.

Isn’t that how syncing and sharing should work? Instead, we’re left with a mess of incompatibility thanks to DRM and proprietary formats as device manufacturers, operators, music retailers and others either seek to lock users in with copy protection, or remain stupidly unaware of how hard their products are to use.

DoubleTwist’s desktop app is currently available for Windows, and a Mac version is forthcoming; it currently supports some S60, Windows Mobile, Sony Ericsson and LG phones with more in the works. Watch this space — hopefully a device maker or perhaps even an operator will realize they should be making things easier, not more difficult, for their customers and license DoubleTwist’s technology.

Obviously there’s some straightforward “wow” here, but where things get really cool is how the system could be extended to sell mobile content and services. Selling mobile content through the physical retail channel has always been a little bit strange. But with surface, phone buyers could be presented with all sorts of compatible content, apps, and services on the big touchscreen as a part of the sales process, then it could be provisioned to the device so they walk out with a new phone that’s full of new content and cool apps as well. Of course, that’s just another version of the operator deck, really, but one step at a time, I guess…

Some other interesting bits from the event:

- AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega gave kudos to his team for rolling out its $99/month unlimited voice plan the same day that Verizon announced its unlimited plan. That came directly after he said, in response to a question from a reporter, that he felt no need to follow Sprint’s plan to offer data and everything else in its unlimited plan — making it clear that Sprint’s not perceived as much of a competitive threat.

- de la Vega said that AT&T had talked to Google about Android, and he sounded pretty impressed with it. He said AT&T’s main concern was that Android was “truly open” — meaning that AT&T would be able to customize it and add its own code and applications. I imagine that’s what plenty of other operators are going to do as well, potentially rendering Android as little more than yet another operator-customized UI.

Let’s recap the hurdles quickly:

First, content. Overall, I think this remains a big problem, mainly because mobile TV services are trying to emulate the linear channels used by regular TV. One of the big selling points of mobile TV is that it lets users tune in whenever they have a moment, so trying to force them to fit to a set broadcast schedule doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Second, the business model. For example, AT&T’s MediaFLO service will cost $15 per month when it launches, and require users to buy a $200 or $300 handset. That’s a big ask for 8 channels.

Third, handsets. There still aren’t a lot of mobile TV-enabled handsets available in the US and European markets, and those that are available remain pricey.

So what’s changing? All of these. Content is getting better, in terms of availability (for instance, AT&T inked deals to carry CNN and a Sony Pictures channel), but also in terms of technology. At least one of Motorola’s new mobile TV receivers has a 30-minute video buffer limited only by available storage space on the device, and the company envisions giving users the ability to set favorites or schedule recordings. Think video RSS — you could set the device to grab the latest episode of SportsCenter so it’s ready for your morning commute, or grab anything matching certain keywords.

Handsets are slowly getting better, but receiver technology won’t be confined specifically to handsets with embedded receivers. One of the cooler things I saw yesterday was the PacketVideo Telly mobile video receiver. It’s a matchbox-sized device that can receive content from DVB-H or MediaFLO mobile TV networks, then it shares them to a handset over Wi-Fi. That means most any Wi-Fi-enabled device can receive mobile TV. Here’s a video I took of the device working with an iPhone:

After the iPhone connects to the device over Wi-Fi, the user just opens up the web browser and surfs to a URL that holds the TV service’s program guide. They click on the show they want to watch, and it begins streaming. So the receiver has a web server built into it, which opens up a lot of possibilities down the road. Meanwhile, PV can also create standalone apps to access Telly — for instance, they have a Symbian app that adds a lot of extra features beyond just the program guide.

A device like Telly means users aren’t so limited in their choice of handsets if they want mobile TV, and it also allows users to add mobile TV service without upgrading if they have a Wi-Fi-enabled device. (A PV rep says it’s also possible to use Bluetooth for local connectivity, but the Telly doesn’t yet support it.)

The business model is changing a little, but remains perhaps the biggest stumbling block. Sprint, for instance, includes its streaming mobile TV service in its flat-rate $100-gets-you-everything plan. But FLO services in the US still carry somewhat high monthly fees. The obvious answer seems to be that prices need to drop, but that will force operators to look at mobile TV as something other than a direct revenue-generator. Something like the Telly could help here, as well, by allowing operators to reduce or perhaps even eliminate the additional subsidy they have to shell out for mobile TV handsets.

I don’t see mobile TV becoming hugely popular in the US and Europe anytime soon, but it does look like things could slowly be coming together for the service.

- Does “open” really mean much here in the US beyond “a new set of rules devised by operators”? Hard to really tell at this point.

- This is like Barcelona with an American accent and on a smaller scale (with a lot of repeats from CES thrown in as well). There’s very little in the way of news, most people I’ve spoken to haven’t seen anything new or particularly exciting. I’m wondering if things are slow because of the economic malaise in the States, and that’s cut down on a lot of the flashiness, or if things are just at a lull here. Not sure exactly what the story is, but things are definitely slow.

- Where are the innovators? Have they given up on big telecom events in favor of stuff like Over The Air later this week in London, or Web 2.0 later this month in San Francisco?

Downside: I wasn’t so late as to miss Verizon Wireless boss Lowell McAdam bitching about taxes and regulation. To hear these guys tell it, the only issue facing the mobile industry is the spectre of increased government regulation of operators’ businesses.

McAdam says we’ll all wear bracelets that will monitor our health, we’ll move content from our handsets to our TVs etc. Visionary stuff, this.

Oh dammit. I didn’t miss Largent, he’s up after McAdam. Curses!

Stat attack: 255 million plus subs in the US at the end of 2007, up 22 million in the year. They use over 1 trillion minutes of voice per year. Annual data revenues for operators was up 53% in 2007 to $23 billion. 48 billion SMS per month, up 120 or so percent over last year.

Here comes FCC chairman Kevin Martin for his regular appearance. I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict he’s wearing a red tie.

I wish the Hilton sports book would have given me odds on that. Martin’s red tie is in the house.

He says the “wireless” industry is seeing dramatic growth and exciting innovation. Claims there’s a “remarkable” level of competition in the US mobile industry, says wireless is “the poster child for competition.”

Martin’s give big ups to the 700 MHz auction and the broadband services it should enable, lauding its ability to deliver mobile broadband to everybody. My thought: if that stuff is so important, why’s the FCC dragging its feet on the white spaces spectrum?

Big news: says he’s today circulating a notice to commissioners denying Skype’s petition to extend the Carterfone ruling to mobile. That draws applause — probably from the operator employees in the crowd.

I’m having a hard time getting over people clapping Martin’s announcement about the Skype decision. Says a lot about this crowd, and about the state of the US mobile industry in general. The petition by Skype may have been a little misguided, but it deserves open debate and discussion, not an off-the-cuff dismissal buried in the middle of a speech to a friendly crowd. I’m used to being disappointed and annoyed by the operator-centric talks from Steve Largent and the operator honchos at the top of the CTIA; Martin’s talk did little to dissuade me that he’s much more than the operators’ crony puppet.

Oh well, at least Richard Branson’s up next. Here’s hoping he entertains. His intro video has some blaring Beastie Boys music, doesn’t seem to be going down well with the suits. Plus, they dropped the f-bomb — forgive me if I interpret that as a subtle jab at Kevin Martin, given his penchant for prudish broadcast regulation.

Heh, he says that he couldn’t register the Virgin name for his record company in the UK in the late 60s, as the patent office there felt it was “too rude.” He then tells the story of Virgin’s first flight — he was flying from the British Virgin Islands to Puerto Rico and his flight was cancelled, stranding him and 200 other passengers. He made some calls to charter companies, and chartered a plane for $2000. He then got a blackboard and wrote “Virgin Airways, single flight to Puerto Rico $39″, and sold out the flight and turned a profit.

Branson asks if anybody’s signed up for a Virgin Galactic flight yet. Don’t see any hands go up. He asks if anybody wants to go to space, and some people clap. Not sure if that drew any more applause than K-Mart’s news about denying the Skype petition.

Now he’s talking up his Virgle JV with Google that wants to send a giant Noah’s Ark to Mars. Happy April 1 to you, too, Richard.

Richard’s announcing the headliners for this summer’s Virgin Music Festival. Time for a surprise guest? Nope. Oh well. But then he floods the stage with volunteers to go on a one-way trip to Mars with Virgle.

Microsoft’s Robbie Bach up next, presumably to talk up Windows Mobile 6.1. Says he’s going to talk about how MS enables innovation. Heh, interestingly, Bach is in a suit and tie (red, natch). Contrast that to his much more laid-back and casual dress at CES. Horses for courses, I guess.

Bach says being ahead of RIM and Apple in market share gives it a position to drive change and innovation in the industry. No comment. But he does make the point that the Windows Mobile platform does allow for choice in form factors and other handset features. Touche Apple.

Cites PlayReady DRM as an example of Microsoft’s innovation in the mobile market. Again, no comment from me, insert your own.

Windows Mobile 6.1, new features, blah blah blah. Doesn’t seem as game-changing or interesting as Bach would like us to believe. New home screen looks sort of nice, and there are other incremental updates. See Mobile Burn for more info.

Two things from 6.1 worth mentioning: a new “Getting Started” set of services to help with initial device setup. Nice to see MS at least thinking about reducing user pain here. Also, the guy doing the demo stresses that many WinMo 6 devices are upgradeable to the new OS release. No idea how strenuous that upgrade process is, but other OS vendors should take note.

Showing off how you can look at the native Facebook and BBC News sites on Windows Mobile. Um, it’s 2008 right?

Guy from Sony Ericsson comes out to show off the Xperia X1. I still think this is an odd situation, given the company’s investment in UIQ and long-running support of Symbian. The demo is focusing on the “tile” user interface on the Xperia… it’s as if they’re just using WinMo as the platform, and tossing out the WinMo UI. Perhaps it’s better suited to that sort of thing than Symbian? Further thought on that — Danger will presumably move to a WinMo-based platform as well, I’d imagine. Interesting possibilities for custom UI over WinMo, maybe.

Sprint’s new CEO Dan Hesse is up next. “Pole position in a new industry, that’s our objective.” Talking up push to talk, must be in the same anachronistic boat as the MS browser guy. Shows a mildly amusing TV ad for PTT, but all I take from it is that the iDEN phone they show at the end still looks chunky — and still has an external antenna.

He says operators have fallen short of the mark in pricing and availability of mobile data services. Obvious point, but fair play for a mobile operator CEO to say that in public. He earns another point by saying that while unlimited voice tariffs are good, they don’t answer the demands of today’s consumer by ignoring data and messaging. Hence the company’s $100 for “everything” — voice, text. picture messages, data, etc — plan. I take a point back by pointing out to myself that $100 a month means it’s still too expensive for the bulk of US mobile consumers.

Whips out the Samsung Instinct, says it’s cool because it’s fast (EV-DO Rev. A) and has a customizable UI. Says it comes with all sorts of pre-loaded content, but also stresses ease of use. It looks like an iPhone knockoff, and that’s what people are going to take away. Watch for the “Sprint’s iPhone competitor” headlines.

We’ve hit the 1 hour 50 mark, and a steady stream of people are leaving. If Hesse’s got any big guns to whip out, he’d better do it soon. Instead, he rolls a promo video for the operator’s Xohm WiMAX network.

Hesse wraps up by talking about how Sprint wants to improve mobile freedom by making things easier for content providers and application developers. He then says they made their network more powerful by turning on their transcoding system, and says they’ll do even more to improve their network for developers and make their lives easier. No, I don’t understand how one follows the other, either.

Symbian OS v9.5 brings high performance features designed for richer consumer and enterprise experiences as well as significant savings to phone build costs and time to market, delivering a truly scalable operating system for the global market.

Symbian OS v9.5 is the result of continued deep collaboration with Symbian OS licensees, the world’s leading handset vendors, and its user interface platform partners including MOAP, S60 and UIQ. With high smartphone growth in developing markets and as mass market requirements from handset manufacturers continue to rise, Symbian’s addressable market is broadening across segments and regions.

Symbian OS v9.5, backward compatible with all versions of the v9 family, includes the following key enhancements:

Higher performance for lower hardware cost
Symbian OS v9.5 delivers performance improvements with reductions in requirements on memory, processor and battery, enabling smartphones based on Symbian OS v9.5 to run on the same hardware as feature phones.

Faster time to market
Symbian is continuing to improve time-to-market for handset vendors, system integrators and developers. Symbian OS v9.5 introduces new hardware adaptation interfaces for digital TV and location based services (LBS) making it cheaper and easier to bring popular services to the mass market.

Designed for richer user experiences:

Multimedia
Symbian smartphones based on Symbian OS v9.5 will support rich multimedia experiences with advanced camera features similar to standalone digital cameras with 35 new features including image orientation following tilt sensor, preset image enhancements, digital/optical zoom, auto focus spots, panorama stitch, image distortion correction auto-focus such as red-eye reduction. With improved seamless connectivity to home computers, enabling the easy transfer of music, videos and images, one smartphone can replace several devices. In addition, with support for multi-standard digital TV (DVB-H, ISDB-T) and standardised LBS, the Symbian smartphone will bring true convergence to consumers worldwide.

Enterprise
New Symbian smartphones will enable users to be more productive and save costs with Wifi-3G connection roaming. Professionals will gain the advantage of having services such as push-email and VoIP run over WiFi when in the office and automatically switch to 3G when on the move. In addition, real-time networking ensures that VoIP is not interrupted when other IP-based services, such as web browsing or push email, make a connection.

Smartphone lifestyle
With over 70% market share, Symbian continues to provide flexibility and choice to leading handset vendors who sell Symbian smartphones to over 250 network operators worldwide. The introduction of Brahmic script in Symbian OS v9.5 which extends Symbian OS support of languages to cover 99% of the world’s countries, the support for global standards including HSPDA, HSUPA and digital TV, makes Symbian the only true global mobile operating system powering both mid-range and high-end mobile phones.

MMS was a bust for photo sharing (not as if that’s news or anything), but the problem was in the execution, not the concept. People like to share photos, and they want to do it — but sending a message to another person every time you take an interesting photo is a pretty awful mechanism. Thus entered moblogging, and all was good. Then people started using things like Flickr on the desktop, and some of them said, wow, it would be cool to have something that worked so nicely on the phone, too. And an industry was spawned. There’s no shortage of companies taking a crack at photo — and other media sharing — from mobile devices. Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of junk out there, but there are some people doing pretty excellent work.

At CTIA, I met with John Poisson, who I’d first heard of back towards the end of TheFeature, when we ran an interview that made him sound like somebody that knew what was up when it came to cameraphones. His company, Tiny Pictures, has released a new application/service called Radar, that, as Poisson puts it, isn’t about photo sharing, but about sharing experiences. Something like Flickr is great, he says, for sharing pictures, but Radar is really designed for mobile users who want to share their lives with their friends. It’s designed in such a way so that the photos aren’t an end in themselves, they’re just a jumping-off point for more interaction among friends. The idea isn’t “hey, look at my photo”, but rather “hey, look at what I’m doing”.

This aim really shines through in the design, both of the web site, and on the Java app for compatible handsets (there’s a mobile Web version too). The setup is pretty simple: login to the site, and you’re presented with a page showing the latest photos from your friends and the latest comments on your own photos. What I think is a little cooler is the “Channels” view, which shows your own photos in a timeline at the top of the page, followed by your friends’ images — which emphasizes the idea that your friends are telling you a story, or really, their story. Radar is very cool, and worth checking out. The only problem? It’s no fun if you don’t have any friends on it too — so buddy up and get on there.

While we’re talking about media sharing, I also checked back in with the good folks at ShoZu at CTIA, and they’re still cranking. They plan to have version 3.0 of their software out by the end of the month, which will include support for ZuCasts, a feature that’s been in beta for a little while now. The first phase of ShoZu was to enable people to push their content, like photos, up to sharing site; this second phase will push media down to users’ handsets. ZuCasts are different kinds of content — photos, video, audio — to which users can subscribe. It’s basically like a podcast, but with all the same benefits when downloading as ShoZu offers when uploading photos, like compression, transfers in the background, recovery from interruptions and so on. Users can also control when feeds are updated — every night, for instance, so fresh content is available in the morning, or manually.

ShoZu’s signed up several content partners, and they’re working on more, with things just swimming right along. The bigger news: they’ve got deals in the works with three of the top five handset manufacturers to get ShoZu embedded in their devices. And that’s not just smartphones, but mid-range featurephones too.

That’s not all the sharing fun from last week — I’ve got news from Vizrea as well, but I’ll save that for another post.

[tags]mobile, cameraphones, mms, shozu, radar, tiny pictures, photo sharing[/tags]

At CTIA last week, I met with a company called SNAPin, which makes a particularly interesting kind of customer-service software. Russell met with them at 3GSM, and like him, I came away pretty impressed. SNAPin software, once installed on compatible handsets (S60 and Windows Mobile at the moment), delivers context-relevant messages and content to users to help the user experience and aid in customer service, as well as to automatically perform service tasks on user devices. For instance, it can automatically adapt APN or other data settings when a user roams, or self-correct broken settings. It can intercept customer-service calls and present users with common call topics, like the ability to check their bill.

It also can pop up with messages triggered by certain events. An operator could set it to pop up the first time a user takes a picture with a handset, offering a tutorial on how to send photos, or offer to use a contact backup service after a user enters names into their phonebook. It can offer help and guidance, but also drive users to content and services, such as the backup example, or in the image at right, where it’s pushing the user towards ringtones. It’s that sort of thing that concerns me a bit — I’m worried that operators could shoot useful technology like this in the foot by taking something designed to significantly improve the user experience, and overextend it in such a way that it’s pretty detrimental.

I raised this issue with Tom Trinneer, a SNAPin VP, and he told me it’s something the company has spent a lot of time thinking about. The software is engineered to be largely invisible to the user, and the company pays special attention to ensuring it won’t drain a users’ battery or subject them to extra costs, and they’ve developed a set of best practices for operators that can be summed up as “don’t be annoying”. Clearly SNAPin realizes that it’s got nothing to gain by encouraging operators to bug the hell out of their users, but at the end of the day, they’re just the vendor, and the operators will pretty much do whatever they want. I’m optimistic that operators will be intelligent enough to use this properly, but it’s not as if they’ve got no track record for doing things on handsets to irritate subscribers.

The point of this isn’t to cast doubt on SNAPin itself — as I said, I think it’s pretty cool technology, and their carrier trials and upcoming deals with vendors to get their software embedded in devices as standard go some way to prove this. But I really wonder if overzealous operators will be able to restrain themselves — I’ve got visions of the Microsoft Office paper clip thing in my head. But, fortunately that paper clip could be turned off when it became annoying. Users will hopefully have the same ability with operators’ implementations of the software, and have a measure of control over what it offers them. Perhaps there’s even room in here for some advertising usage — ie opt-in to our content pushes, and get discounts or free stuff, or something similar.

So, as I said in the title, if operators get the ability to pop things up on users’ screens, both in cases where they can help a lot, or simply just to push them to services or promotions, can they be trusted to do so responsibly?

[tags]mobile, ctia, snapin[/tags]