Obviously, many others topics were “hot” however, these were some of the things that made an impact on me. Read on for just a sampling of news and cool things I witnessed at North America’s largest wireless trade show.

Disney’s MVNO
Hot topics kicking off the event and sending ripples through the crowd included word of an MVNO from Disney Mobile. The service is scheduled to launch in June and will be available with two handsets (clamshells), one from Pantech ($60) and a premium offering from LG (the DM-L200 priced at $110). The service will be tailored to the family, simple to use, manage, and will be affordable. At the core of Disney Mobile will be the Family Center™ enabling parents to manage the service. Functionality of the Center will include:
Set spending allowances and track usage for voice, txt, and data services
Set hours or day when kids can use the phone
Program restricted and always-on numbers
Prioritize family messages
Locate kids using GPS
The service will offer wireless voice, text, picture messaging, and a broad range of entertainment content. See www.disneymobile.com

Mobile Payment
There’s no doubt that the industry (and users) want easy-to-use mobile applications and SMS is the preferred mechanism to access applications. PayPal introduced users to their mobile payment solution at CTIA Wireless and the simplicity of this application is no doubt going launch this application into the stratosphere! Here’s the premise… users make payments by sending a simple text message to PayPal, which calls the user back to confirm the mobile payment and then sends the money to the recipient. The service also allows users to buy goods and services, such as CDs, DVDs and tickets, by sending product codes via text message. Imagine driving past a billboard or watching a TV commercial and you are presented with a message to buy this product right now via PayPal Mobile by texting 1234567… it’s that easy and it’s secure as no sensitive information is sent via the phone (all account information is stored on PayPal servers)! I like this app and have no doubt it’s a winner! Availability:
United States – Alltel Sprint T-Mobile Verizon
Canada -  Aliant Bell FIDO Microcell MTS Northern Tel Rogers Wireless SaskTel Telebec Telus Mobility Virgin
UK -  Extreme Mobile O2 Orange Tesco Three T-Mobile Virgin Vodafone

PayPal mobile service will be very simple to use!

Mobile Music
Much todo was made about music, ring tones, master tones and mobile music services… it was everywhere! With the likes of LL Cool J, 4DL, and even the President of Black Entertainment Television (BET) making appearances at the day 1 keynote, there was no doubt that music is making the mobile world go round. We were told how Billboard magazine is expanding their rankings or ring tones to now include a chart of the hottest Master Tones. Called Hot MasterTones  listing off the Top 20 master tones by sales for the week. See http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/charts.jsp - hopefully we'll start seeing more bundling of music and music services to include packages of music, ringtones, images, video, etc...

Developers Developing
Kudos once again to WINBC on the Wireless Innovation Contest (WIC), another fine opportunity for developers (from North America) to gain exposure, shop their applications to a great audience or carrier reps, investors, and others. The winners of the WIC 2006 were acknowledged at CTIA Wireless at an evening dinner reception. Winners were as follows:
Gearworks Inc for their etrace application – etrace measures, manages, and optimizes field service operations enabling users to track mobile workers, automate timesheets, capture data, and manage communications with workers. Etrace uses J2ME and BREW to deliver the application on iden and CDMA handsets. See www.gearworks.com.
Elster Electricity LLC for EneryAxis System – uses smart meters with an embedded mesh radio to create a 2 way communication network to benefit the utilities market… think automated utility meter reading via wireless communications. See www.elsterelectricity.com

Other winners include:
Digital Chocolate and MLSN Sports Picks – www.digitalchocolate.com
MedicTouch Wireless PulseMeter – www.medictouch.com
Mobile Voter Voter Registration Module – www.mobilevoter.org

More about WINBC and WIC available from www.winbc.org

Navteq LBS Challenge
Once again Navteq recognized excellence in application development by selecting the winners of the 3rd annual LBS Challenge. More than 200 applications were entered in this years’ event with applications grouped into 4 categories: Business, Navigation, Entertainment, and Social Networking. Applications were developed on technology enabled by several corporate sponsors and LBS platform providers – Autodesk Location Services, ESRI ArcWeb Services, Telcontar, SiRF Technolgy, and Network in Motion. The overall winner this year was tierravision for their Workspace Locator, an innovative solution that provides for workspace CRM for workspace.com and provides GPS tracking of users. The winner received $50k and $100K worth of Navteq data for use in a licensed application. The Navteq Challenge is expanding further in 2007 with the addition of an Asia/Pacific round of judging (recall last year saw the addition of a European event at 3GSM) and developers can expect further support via a new Navteq Developer Program as well as a developer conference to take place at the fall Wireless IT conference in Los Angeles, CA – See www.lbschallenge.com – of interest… don’t think LBS is coming on strong? I was interested to notice that in the CTIA Wireless Show Daily publication from RCR Wireless there were 3 full page ads for LBS applications placed by geometrix, intrado, Wayfinder! See more HERE

More Handsets
Nokia used the CTIA platform to launch 4 new devices, 1 for the GSM crowd, 3 for who prefer CDMA. Enter the following:
Nokia 2365i – an entry6 level model, flip phone featuring Bluetooth technology.
Nokia 2865 – stylish flip phone featuring Bluetooth, internal antenna, FM Radio
Nokia 6175i – a mid-level flip phone featuring 1.3 mega-pixel camera, Bluetooth, internal antenna, and stereo FM radio.
6126 (GSM) – another mid-level device, this until is a quad band World phone and sports 1.3 megapixel camera, music player, swappable memory card, Bluetooth, 16 million color screen display and a snappy slim design.

On the exhibition floor Nokia had a HUGE display and once again did a fine job showcasing their developers. A very prominent display stage was used for presentations and developers manned pods in a high traffic and visible space dead-center in the booth… a nice touch! Forum Nokia hosted an evening “gala” reception where a number of Pro developers were on hand along with Forum Nokia execs… it was a fine “schmoozing” opportunity.

More handsets introduced at the event:
- Motorola RAZR V3m – a music enhanced CDMA device with music player and optional 1GB storage.
- Sony Ericsson launched a new GSM PTT Quad-band clamshell in the Z25. The device sports a clamshell design, VGA camera, MP3 support, speaker phone, and ultra slim package.
- LG announced the CG300 “Chocolate phone” – a CDMA EVDO slider for the 1.9 GHz spectrum. Its ultra-thin, includes MP3 player, and a 1.3 megapixel camera supported by 12 MB internal memory.

Observations…

SMS.ac Making a Splash!
SMS.ac was in attendance in a huge way. The company boasted a large and colorful display area at the front of a main entrance to the exhibition hall with a large crew outfitted in their customary orange, yellow, green, and blue logo’d uniforms. In a nutshell, the company makes available a Global, mobile community marketplace and social network. Millions of members (they boast 50 mill!) from some 180 countries can interact and exchange information, products, and services. Send txt messages, upload photos to an album, and register for mobile services and alerts. Using xPML (a new markup language) users can create mobile pods where community member place pods of their liking on their “homepage” for all their friends to share. In building their own homepage, users add “pods” which in turn generate mobile content sent directly to the mobile account tied to the homepage. For example, the mobile headlines pod provides a subscriber with the latest news headlines sent to the subscriber’s handset for a monthly fee ($2.99 month in this case). Developers are invited to use xPML to integrate their applications into the community where members can register and purchase more products and services… developers get a % of the take. The company has made available a mobile API, user API, and billing API to help developers create their Pod and start the cash rolling in! See www.sms.ac

At the VoIP conference a question was asked… “when can I buy a Wi-Fi phone and expect to be able to use it in a coffee shop?” The response was essentially that although it’s technologically possible (ie. Supporting devices are out there) but the problem lies in the problem that devices simply don’t have a supported UI or browser enabling this kind of service. Enterprise has been the early adopted of Voice over Wi-Fi.

On the floor I made a stop at Avanquest Software’s booth to get a look at their BVRP Mobile Phone Tools suite. This PC-based suite integrates a host of modules in order to manage, synchronize, and backup your critical phone data. Additionally, create types can create, manage, and transfer multimedia content (images, tunes, videos) and send all kinds of messages to mobiles from your PC. The suite is available in a number of languages (26) and can be easily setup via Bluetooth connection. Mobile PhoneTools is compatible with GSM and CDMA networks and supports a number of platforms including Linux, Windows Mobile, and Symbian OS. See http://www.avanquest.com 

Easily synchronize your mobile and your computer using Mobile Phone Tools (See http://www.bvrp.com)

Ooober (www.ooober.com) was part of a Canadian contingency on hand and their application got my interest. Billed as a global entertainment marketplace, users and developers of mobile content (ringtones, themes, wallpapers, video) can easily, and quickly setup a customized marketplace. Other supported solutions that users can incorporate into their marketplace include mobile chat/blogs, mobile voting, alerts, and greetings. Those developers with little time looking to monetize their products can easily have a full-blown e-commerce solution up and running in minutes and billing alternatives like carrier billing, credit card support, and PayPal are available.

In a panel discussion about mobile music and entertainment it seemed obvious that most in the room are expecting an MNVO from Apple. When it comes to the music industry there’s little doubt that Apple and the iPod has had a profound effect and the company has had tremendous success to date. Regardless of the number of fine music phones and supporting devices available on the market today, many users are still lugging around multiple devices… many of them unwilling to part with their iPod (I recall hearing Lee Epting or Forum Nokia mention on a couple of occasions that she doesn’t not go anywhere without her iPod).  My guess… Expect an Apple cell phone/music phone to come to market within a year or so – what’s your take?

Speaking of new players, the discussion of another Advanced wireless service auction (AWS) was raised during the day 1 keynote session. The focus of the discussion is the 700 Mhz spectrum which will make available a tremendous amount of rich spectrum to carry lots of data effectively. What’s interesting in this auction is the idea of Microsoft and Google coming into the market to bid for spectrum.  This will create an exciting time with the possibility for new mobile services and applications according to FCC chair Kevin Martin.

Interesting news:
Opera Mini attracts two million users around the world. From the PR… While every user does not browse every day, the daily number of Web pages surfed with Opera Mini exceeds four million, proving the browser has become very popular among mobile phone owners. After Opera Mini's compression, the average Web page size is between 10 and 20 kilobytes. With the current usage, Opera Mini's users generate between 38 and 76 gigabytes of data traffic every day, providing a healthy revenue stream for operators. Opera Mini can dramatically boost operators' ARPU and increase the market demand for data-packages. See www.opera.com

By The Numbers…

Some of the numbers tossed around at the event:

• 42% or users grabbing ring tones are now downloading master tones
• est. 2-2.5 million users are buying ringbacktones
• Universal Mobile Music estimates that for every song the company distributes, they need to make 325 different file formats available in order to support a wide array of devices and carriers.
• Wireless content make up about 20% of the music industry
• 20 – billboard magazine plans on expanding ring tone rankings with a chart of the Top 20 master ring tone sales for the week.
• Globally, in 2005, ring tone products accounted for some $4.4 billion in sales.
• 3 – number of items people never leave home without (wallet, keys, and phone)
• 3 – number of screens in people’s lives (TV, Computer, and phone)
• In the US there were 25.7 million new wireless subscribers in 2005 for a total of 208 million – that’s a 70% penetration rate.
• More than 1.5 trillion minutes of wireless usage in 2005

Obviously I could go on and on, however, if I was to leave you with a couple of words describing what was HOT at CTIA, there’s no doubt in my mind that mobile music / master tones, SMS, and location-based services (LBS) are all on the upswing. The demand for user-generated content and social networking has never been greater and mobile payment solutions are going to kick-start mobile e-commerce like never imagined possible. Opportunities for recognition of developers are available via contests like the LBS Challenge and WIC so be sure to check out the opportunities for yourself and we’ll hopefully see you in the winner’s circle next year… keep in mind though, users are still struggling with searching and discovery, SMS is the enabler of choice and simplicity is a must-have in the functionality of your application. If nothing else, keep those applications simple to use, easy to access, and quick to locate on the device.

Some Fun images!

Microsoft Restroom?

Glenn meets NFL star Jerry Rice!

Now that's a mobile gamer!

Booth Babes?

Save The Dates...

• CTIA Wireless 2007, March 27-29, 2007, Orlando, Florida
• CTIA Wireless IT 2006, September 12-14, 1006, Los Angeles, CA