CTIA 2009 NEW PHONES AND REFLECTIONS OF THE SHOW

CTIA reflections

As I am on my flight back to Chicago I am reflecting on the three days of CTIA and the things we have seen and learned. A part of me is disappointed in the show - it didn’t have the fanfare of the CES show and not close to the number of announcements in terms of products new releases. The big disappointment of the show was the lack of more Android based devices, same as at the WMC.

The coolest new CTIA device for 2009 was the LG transparent phone. It has a tempered glass slide out keyboard which also is an extension to its touch screen interface.

  The LG Operation System has nicely borrowed from the linux OS interface by allowing a user to flipp between groups of applications. It provides the user with a similar experience to that of the Mac Expose or spaces – in the LG’s case by placing them on a rotating cube. Although I was able to freeze up the LG GD900 during my review of it at the show, I was still impressed with the device. It is slick, innovative and has a nice feel. The LG GD900 transparent phone also had the ability to take video and it had video playback.

The best booth would have to go to NTT Docomo.. It was the first time we looked at their devices and we are deeply sorry that we are only now seeing the amazing devices from NTT DOCMO. Their phones of DOCOMO make the rest of the devices we have seen here seem stuck in the analog years. The amazing power of video, storage and the form factors of their devices seemed years ahead of the current devices we use in the states. We were also impressed with the level of integration of the wireless devices with other household staples, such as the scale. There was also a very clear demonstration of integration of these devices with household entertainment, as an input device and a stand alone video player. We’ll keep an eye out on these Japanese cell phones as we believe we are seeing a future of what is to come to the US and the rest of the world.

Although subdued the show had two underlying themes for the consumer. One was the coming of video to the device. Wehther its over the air, or downloaded – vide will be a part of most of the devices coming out in the future. The other was the growth in processing power of the smart phones and their ability to challenge the PC. We believe this will be a great trend providing more people with the ability to browse the internet and harness its power without having to invest in a PC – or a laptop. The future of mobile computing is going to be even more exciting!