When the curtain came down on the 2008 edition of the 3 GSM World Congress in Barcelona, we were left with that familiar feeling of...well...emptiness. For, notwithstanding all the daily announcements and 'revolutionary forecasts,' nothing really concrete emerged from the event. I know we will be accused of being cynical and that supporters will point out that after all, this was the event that saw the unveiling of Sony's new Windows Mobile device, Nokia's new maps, Yahoo!'s new mobile initiative and the Lord alone knows what else, but well, we are not convinced.
For us in Delhi - and we were keeping an eye on Barca - the event was basically a never-ending series of announcements, none of which really surprised us. Yes, we had heard of Sony's dalliance with Windows Mobile, we knew Microsoft was acquiring Danger a few weeks ago, and yeah, yeah, Nokia has been talking about its map updates and the Ovi release for a while now. We are sure that some of the smaller players must have come up with some great stuff but alas, the media was too busy chasing the big names, so we will find out what they offered only later in the year. To make matters worse, most of the products were just "announced" or "unveiled" at the conference. We are not likely to see them in the market for a while and when they do come, we bet they are likely to be rather different from the souped-up descriptions that they were "announced" with.
All of which makes us wonder what the fuss is about! Yes, 3 GSM is a great event for networking and for the industry, but for the mobile user, the takeaway does seem a bit on the lesser side. Or are we just in a cynical mood this morning?
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