Mobile World Congress 2010 round-up

February 25th, 2010

closing-blog-postMobile World Congress in Barcelona is fast becoming one of the consumer tech world’s biggest trade events of the year, rivaling CES in Las Vegas in January and E3 in Los Angeles in June in terms of its sheer size and importance. Since its humble beginnings way back in 1987 the show – held at the immense 29,000 metre-square Fira de Barcelona exhibition centre – has now grown to become the mobile technology industry’s most important global gathering.

UK Technology LIVE was at this year’s event, hammering the shoe-leather to ensure that we covered all the latest and most exciting, thought-provoking and (potentially) industry disrupting news from the many British companies that were exhibiting at the show. Read on for our quick round-up of the companies, products, events and announcements that made MWC 2010 for us.

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Lord Davies, Minister for Trade, Investment and Small Business at Mobile World Congress 2010

February 23rd, 2010

Predictive Text 2.0 at MWC 2010

February 19th, 2010

KPT-2One increasingly popular theme at this year’s Mobile World Congress has been ‘next generation’ predictive text input, in addition to developments in new forms of touch and voice input on your mobile phone. One company that is pioneering new predictive texting tech is Scotland’s KeyPoint Technologies – www.keypoint-tech.com – and UK Technology LIVE caught up with the company’s Head of Products and Services, Andrew Glen to find out all about ‘text 2.0’.

“We are a language software developer,” explains Glen. “And the solution that we are looking to get a handset manufacturer to embed is ‘predictive text 2.0’ – and all that basically means is that it is predictive text that learns what the user is writing, so that you don’t get those silly suggestions all of the time.

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Internet telephony specialists Squire Technologies at MWC 2010

February 19th, 2010

Squire TechnologiesUK Technology LIVE caught up with Oliver Reynolds-McGowan, Sales Manager for Dorset-based company Squire Technologies Ltd in the UK Pavilion at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Squire was originally established back in 2001. They are an SS7 and Voice-Over IP signalling specialist, providing direct SS7 interconnect and legacy interconnect to the telecoms industries, working with the likes of Vodafone, Orange and BT on the interconnect side of the business. They also work with large multinational equipment manufacturers such as NEC.

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The Northern Ireland Mobile Excellence stand in the UK Pavilion was sponsored and organised by Invest NI.

February 19th, 2010

Northern IrelandUK Technology LIVE caught up with Colm Hayden, Technical Director of Anaeko and one of the representatives on the NI Mobile Excellence stand. Hayden also runs MobileMonday Belfast http://mobilemondaybelfast.org/ – the Irish chapter of the global networking initiative for mobile industry and software professionals.

“All of these companies on the stand come from Northern Ireland and represent a diverse mix of innovation in Northern Ireland,” Hayden informed us. “We have a long-held tradition of core infrastructure technology, from SMSC technology, mobile internet and email access technology… and the big players in those areas have cultivated deep network knowledge.”

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Cambridge Consultants explain the importance of the femtocell

February 19th, 2010

Cambridge ConsultantsWorld-leading R&D outfit Cambridge Consultants was exhibiting in the UK Pavilion area at Mobile World Congress 2010 and UK Technology LIVE caught up with Monty Barlow, one of the organisation’s reps at the show, to find out more about the latest mobile tech developments and innovations coming out of the group’s ground-breaking mobile tech research.

“Cambridge Consultants is about a 300 person strong firm offering research and development and technology development for mobile companies, generally with a very innovative and high tech element to it,” Barlow explained.

“I’m part of the wireless division, which is here at the show with a number of demonstrations of some of the new technologies we are developing – everything from cutting edge mathematics for long-term evolution to miniature GSM femtocells for markets like Africa.”

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UKTI hosts Turkish / UK partnering event at MWC

February 19th, 2010

The man who might teach Google about private and secure cloud computing

February 19th, 2010

Private PlanetThere are a lot of quite serious and important security and privacy concerns surrounding our current notion of the concept of ‘cloud computing’ – which is generally understood to be computing infrastructure and services offered to domestic and business users through data centres that are physically located and based somewhere outside of our  homes or offices.

One person who has been talking a lot about these issues of late – and who also hosted a high-profile talk on this vitally important matter at Mobile World Congress this week – is CEO and Founder of Private Planet, Dr Janko Mrsic-Flagel, whose company has been developing some very elegant solutions for managing your ‘digital self’ and your digital lifestyle in the cloud.

“Cloud computing is basically about making the systems inside enterprises or homes thinner,” explains Mrsic-Flagel. “However, imagine that every person had their own personal cloud computer. What would that do for that individual?”

One thing it would mean is that all of your various devices – your mobiles, your tablet, your netbook, your desktop, your TV and so on – could be connected through that cloud computer. “All your devices can synchronize through your personal cloud computer,” he says. “All your devices can know about each other.”

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Indian developers and mobile firms keen to partner with UK innovators

February 17th, 2010

IMG_2039Emerging mobile markets in countries such as India are increasingly of interest to British mobile companies and technology developers.

UK Technology LIVE has also seen an increasing number of innovative mobile devices, applications and solutions  at this year’s Mobile World Congress that are specifically designed to help those living in developing countries at levels close to (or often below) the poverty line.

In addition to this, there is also a growing market for UK technology firms looking to outsource work to Indian companies, who can often provide cost-effective solutions for their businesses.

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Scottish innovation on the SDI stand at MWC 2010

February 17th, 2010

Scotland (2)Scottish Development International (SDI) is the trade and investment arm of the Scottish Government.

SDI has two main functions, the first is to assist overseas companies to invest in Scotland and the second is to help Scottish companies do more business overseas.

UK Technology LIVE spoke with Tony Ianniello, MD of Scottish company Premium Mobile Distribution, who told us: “SDI’s participation here is fantastic for an SME like us, because it offers us access to a range of services, contacts and networks which we would not have access to otherwise.”

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