All Articles Tagged mwc09

Join Dieter, Matthew, Kevin, Rene, and Casey as they discuss Mobile World Congress 2009 — there’s a little bit for everybody in this gigantic cross-platfrom smartphone podcast!

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Rene and Chad fill in for Dieter and Mike this week, covering Mobile World Congress, the latest with Google and GPS, more MobileMe, Jailbreaking illegal, and the rest of the news. Listen in!

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If you haven’t heard, Apple’s a no-show here at Mobile World Congress 2009, this show pretty much belongs to Microsoft, HTC, and Nokia (with a side of Samsung and Sony Ericsson). However, as with other trade shows like CES and CTIA, Apple’s presence is felt in its absence. Rather than join their brethren in the mobile community, Apple sits it out and watches while other companies are forced to make their announcements in a context Apple has created. To wit: Both Microsoft and Nokia announced App Stores this week. Microsoft’s Market is basically a no-show, though, all we have is promises. Nokia’s isn’t ready yet either, but it will be in May.

Actually, we know quite a bit about Nokia’s App Store, called the Ovi Store. It’s an extension (and replacement) of their earlier services and includes everything from apps to ringtones to wallpapers to widgets. Here’s the thing, folks: Nokia may have solved the #1 problem at Apple’s App Store: finding apps that are 1. good and 2. interest you.

What Nokia has done is build a sophisticated relevancy engine that can sort apps based on a variety of factors that are actually relevant to you — like what you friends are using, or what kind of app you like to download, or what music you tend to prefer. It looks to be much better than your standard “top 50″ list and if Apple is smart and shameless (we know they’re both), they’ll steal these features as soon as humanly possible.

The Ovi Store also looks to be a little kinder and gentler on developers too, giving them more power over how (and if!) their app will be distributed.

I’ve written the whole thing up over at sister-site Nokia Experts, go on and take a look.

[How about Apple needs to expand iTunes GENIUS recommendations to the App Store immediately? -- Rene]

Smartphone Experts’ always-on-the-go editor-in-chief Dieter Bohn is in Spain and on the floor, ready to send us back any and all news from Mobile World Congress this week. Of course, Apple isn’t there, and most general-purpose smartphone shows are pretty happy to pretend the iPhone doesn’t exist, so while we won’t see anything in the way of new hardware or firmware, we have heard some rumors about pretty big software announcements. (Hint: rhymes with socs2go).

For those interested in what the competition is iCloning doing, keep an eye on these Mobile World Congress sections of PreCentral (including GSM Pre!), WMExperts (including the Touch Diamond 2 and Pro 2), Android Central (pending), and Nokia Experts (pending).

See anything that should make Apple nervous?