ITU 03 diary – Gates, 3G, holograms and missing phones

The first ‘working day’ of this giant show was dominated by some of the industry’s big issues – standing out were the 3G licensing fiasco and Bill Gates (OK, so he’s not strictly an issue).

Gates addressed a big mid-morning crowd, drawing in the punters like no one else could. Which is no bad thing for the show overall. His messages weren’t revolutionary though an alliance with Vodafone for mobile web services got a few people excited.

Analysts generally welcomed the pairing, though some of the assembled media tutted, thinking of the companies that have been trying to marry web services and mobile but making slow progress.

You can either say Microsoft will move the market – or once again rip virgin soil from the hands of the little guys. Of course, all is fair in love, war and XML. No real tears will be shed but let’s hope the marriage works – Microsoft and Vodafone stressed enough that theirs is an “industry play”.

And by the way, the highlight of the demo was a vehicle rescue scenario replete with American Ford Explorer driver stranded in “downtown London” (actually Fulham). Now why couldn’t someone from Reading been doing the walk through? Not a big complaint but realism is achievable.

One thing that did register during Gates’ keynote (besides the man himself, naturally) was the number of screens that could be seen in the darkened arena. Screens on digital cameras, camcorders and of course mobile phones. When the photographers got their minute at the beginning it looked like half of those flashing away were getting ready to send an MMS.

Now there’s a change from four years ago. And it’s one that should have registered with one of the last panels of the day. Assembled association heads, lawyers and regulators wrung their hands over the 3G licensing process in many countries.

Operators ended up paying around $100bn collectively worldwide. Sure, it was near the height of the bubble, hype was at a new level and 3G sounded great but in the years since you’d be forgiven for thinking no one wants multimedia features and high-speed data via their phones. I know the crowd was made up of techies, early-adopters, the wealthy and journalists (who generally fall in to none of those categories) but there is a demand there.

The industry has perhaps suffered a crisis of confidence overblown, even given the greed and poor decisions that were made way back three or four years ago.

One stand to hit the ‘novelty factor’ bang on the head so far has been Telecom Italia’s. Nothing special in itself, it features holograms of phones and a key. (Didn’t get that bit.) It really does look good as you wave your hand through it. The one trouble is that you then see the real object about two feet below the hologram, leading to an “And the point of that was…?” moment.

One company that could have done with decent holograms, it would seem, is Chinese handset maker DBTEL. Rumours were going around the show that one of its flagship phones, featuring MPEG4 technology had gone walkabouts in a dawn raid. (Made up the last bit but thefts are an albeit uncommon reality of such events.) Could someone turn out the lights and put it back quietly?

Until tomorrow and another journey from Lake Geneva to the Finland station. (The Finnish pavillion being close to the Media Centre, you understand.)