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PPCSG.com is at Mobius 2007 in Amsterdam, hosted by Microsoft. PPCSG.com appreciates Microsoft for inviting us to the event this year, you may be wondering what is Mobius? It is a network of unique websites from across the globe that features mobility, Mobius is an endless conversation about mobility. This year, we were invited to beautifully cold and slightly rainy Amsterdam, Holland for the event, in the next 2 days around 25 top mobility enthusiast websites are here to listen and get an inside look at where Moility is headed for 2008 and out. Event speakers and sponsors include, Microsoft, HTC, Qualcomm, Astraware and Forrester Research Inc.

Day 1
John Starkweather of Microsoft and Mobius host kicked off the event with an introduction to what is Mobius and welcomed to Mobius 2007.

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These are the attendees for Mobius 2007

Rafe Blandford www.allaboutsymbian.com
Paul O’Brien www.modaco.com
Nghia Nguyen www.pdafrance.com
Arne Hess www.theunwired.net
Guido Bonati www.solopalmari.com
Remo Knops www.pocketinfo.nl
Eldar Murtazin http://www.mobile-review.com/index-en.shtml & http://www.mobile-review.com/index-en.shtml
Philip Berne www.infosyncworld.no
Shane Chiang www.ppcsg.com
Paul Matt www.phonedaily.com
Jenneth Orantia www.geardiary.com
Andrew Shuttleworth www.windowsmobileinjapan.com
Atushi Koyanagi www.htc-fan.jp
Mauricio Freitas www.geekzone.co.nz
Matt Miller http://blogs.zdnet.com/mobile-gadgeteer & http://blogs.zdnet.com/mobile-gadgeteer/
Ryan Block www.engadget.com
Jason Dunn www.pocketpcthoughts.com
Michael Oryl www.mobileburn.com
Judie Lipsett Hughes www.geardiary.com
Eric Lin www.phonescoop.com
Vincent Nguyen www.slashphone.com
Dieter Bohn www.treocentral.com


What's new for the coming next 10 months? By Jason Langridge, Microsoft.

Today, we saw Windows Mobile's next update, coming out by Q2 2008. The demo shown to us was running on a current device, giving us a hint that it would possibly be an update by carriers or brands. There are several new updates, an even more engaging GUI, new features added, an even tighter coding that Microsoft heard from users, so it is even more snappier than Windows Mobile 6, there are quite a few additions that is sure to keep both the enthusiast and daily users happy.

Windows Mobile Office with the Office 2008 updates included, will be made available for current Windows Mobile 6 devices, it will be available throughout all devices in the next Windows Mobile update.

Are you talking about the ce6 based upgrade or still ce5 based?

Edit: never mind. Got the answer from the another thread. It's still ce5 based.

Enjoy and take care there Shane! Nice review!

Photos of device,

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Device line up shot


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LG's classy Windows Mobile Professional device.

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Pantech's dual slider: PANTECH DUO

This is a cool Windows Mobile Smartphone, it has a dual slider slot for numeric key for your phone calls and also for those whom are heavy sms or email users can slide out the QWERTY keyboard that can be easily used, the buttons tactile feel makes it quite a good messaging device without looking too squarish. The phone is not overly thick and has a nice side profile.

Radio: GSM 850 / GSM 900 / GSM 1800 / GSM 1900 & WCDMA 850 / WCDMA 1900
Weight: 110 g
Dimensions: 102 x 50 x 19.8 mm
Interna:l Antenna
Battery Life Talk: 3 hours (180 minutes)
Standby: 250 hours (10.4 days)
Battery Type: LiIon 1320 mAh
Display Type: LCD (Color TFT/TFD) Colors: 65,536 (16-bit)
Resolution: 240 x 320 pixels
2.2 inches
Platform / OS Windows Mobile Standard (Smartphone) WM 6
Processor: 416 MHz
Memory: 56 MB

More pictures of new devices,

Samsung i620 Windows Mobile

Radio: HSDPA / GSM 900 / GSM 1800 / GSM 1900
Size Dimensions 94.9 x 59.3 x 16.3 mm
Weight 126.2 g
Display Type TFT, 65K colors Size 320 x 240 pixels, 2.2 inches
Ringtones Type Polyphonic (40 channels), MP3
Vibration Yes
Memory Phonebook 1000 entries, Photocall
Call records 30 dialed, 30 received, 30 missed calls
Card slot microSD (TransFlash)
80 MB shared memory
Data GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
EDGE/ 3G HSDPA
WLAN
Bluetooth Yes, v2.0 with A2DP
Features OS Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.0 Standard Edition
Messaging SMS, EMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging
Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML(Opera), RSS feeds
Colors Silver, Black
Camera 2 MP, 1600x1200 pixels, video, flash; secondary VGA videocall camera
- Java MIDP 2.0
- WMV/3GP/H.263/MPEG4 player
- WMA/MP3/AAC/AAC+/OGG/ASF player
- Organiser
- Document viewer (MS Word, Excel, PPT, PDF)
- Image viewer (jpeg/gif/bmp/png)
- Built-in handsfree
Battery Standard battery, Li-Ion 1200 mAh
Stand-by Up to 320 h
Talk time Up to 6 h 30 min

Where do we see the mobile market heading? By Paul Jackson, Forrester Research Inc.

Paul Jackson from Forrester Research Inc gave an hour long insight of research information of where mobility is headed towards in the next 2-5 years, how it will impact the manufacturers, emerging markets and relationships to the internet. Connectivity, pricing and future features and innovations was shared with us about where Forrester Research Inc sees where the market is heading. Consumers wants and manufacturer's constant pursuit to satisfy the consumer market with more features and quality products. This view lead me to think about the current market climate, for example no manufacturer dare say that they have the ultimate device even though sometimes they may think so they do until another newer design overtakes them in the area of product design, usability and improved hardware. One company that challenged the norm was Apple with their iconic looking iPhone, but is that the ultimate design, it was interested that with all the hype about Apple it is still not the ultimate device that everyone wanted, but they did give current brands a challenge to relook at their designs and companies like Microsoft works best under pressure to be better.

Different market segments are unique base on the cost of products and types of products sold in that market. China and India are the world's largest mobility markets and growing by leaps and bounds each year. As data cost starts to come down we will see more adoption to the 3G and higher networks as consumers will start to use their mobility devices even more than before for data needs. We will see more technological enhancements, also we will see price wars among brands and carriers to capture these markets.

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The final word from Paul was about Convergence vs Divergence, one device to carry for all your needs against carry different devices for different needs. Personally I am an advocate for convergent devices. I have an MP3 player, a digital camera and a mobile phone that is supposed to do all three, play music, take pictures and is a mobile phone. However at the back of my mind, I know that the lens on the mobile phone is not as good as a proper stand alone digital camera and the MP3 player on my device is limited to the data storage ability of my device's memory card, and all these depends on the battery life of the device, these "issues" prevents me from settling down on an all-in-one device. It is just not possible at the moment. However to satisfy these needs of the consumer is not too far away as more and more manufacturers inch closer towards the next best device built.

http://www.forrester.com/rb/research

Japaness Windows Mobile phone called the Willcom. These are devices we will not see in Singapore, it is not the most beautiful device, but it is functional.

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Some interesting products at the event, an Asus Ee, it runs on Linux and the Amazon Kindle that did a huge advertising blitz on replacing the paper books with non-paper ones. It is a good attempt, just that the gadget in question is very plasticky in nature and also the built quality is quite terrible the feeling of cheap plastics. The idea is good but the built is not.

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i wonder why if folks from xda-dev were invited or not?

Cheeky. I "wonder" too.

Rafe Blandford www.allaboutsymbian.com
Paul O’Brien www.modaco.com
Nghia Nguyen www.pdafrance.com
Arne Hess www.theunwired.net
Guido Bonati www.solopalmari.com
Remo Knops www.pocketinfo.nl
Eldar Murtazin http://www.mobile-review.com/index-en.shtml & http://www.mobile-review.com/index-en.shtml
Philip Berne www.infosyncworld.no
Shane Chiang www.ppcsg.com
Paul Matt www.phonedaily.com
Jenneth Orantia www.geardiary.com
Andrew Shuttleworth www.windowsmobileinjapan.com
Atushi Koyanagi www.htc-fan.jp
Mauricio Freitas www.geekzone.co.nz
Matt Miller http://blogs.zdnet.com/mobile-gadgeteer & http://blogs.zdnet.com/mobile-gadgeteer/
Ryan Block www.engadget.com
Jason Dunn www.pocketpcthoughts.com
Michael Oryl www.mobileburn.com
Judie Lipsett Hughes www.geardiary.com
Eric Lin www.phonescoop.com
Vincent Nguyen www.slashphone.com
Dieter Bohn www.treocentral.com

apparently not

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Qualcomm's Steve Horton

CDMA Technologies By Qualcomm
A designer and supplier of CDMA chipsets, system software, network base stations, handsets, modems, kid trackers, camera phones, MP3 players, game players. Qualcomm is the number one wireless chip supplier and 9th largest semi-conductor in the world. Qualcomm used to manufacture mobile phones several years ago and are now only focused in making wireless chipsets, unknowingly to many, they are one of the largest Chipset manufacturer in the world. Qualcomm also are a big supplier of AGPS chipset found in majority of phones in the US and in China as well, as they come into the 3G market(They are CDMA based) we will see a shift of production at Qualcomm growing in an even faster pace than before.

From the Mobius event, we understand that there will be new chipsets for the Windows Mobile Professional and Smartphones platforms and are in development for an all-in-one chip, power saving chipsets, AGPS, graphics, power management, etc.

Snapdragon, is Qualcomm's next generation chipset platform, which adds gaming/portable entertainment devices to pocket computers and beyond. Ubiquitous connectivity to mobile broadband, great processing performance and extended battery life. Some technical specifications of Snapdragon, a Scorpion 1 GHz microprocessor paired with 128-bit SIMD (single instruction multiple data) capability and QUALCOMM's next-generation 600 MHz digital signal processor (DSP) the Universal wireless broadband connectivity: that includes, CDMA2000 1xEV-DO and UMTS (WCDMA)/HSDPA/HSUPA networks, for your connectivity solutions, there is Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, Broadcast technologies MediaFLO, SDMB, ISDB-T, TDMB, DVB-H with QUALCOMM's UBM universal broadcast modem solution. The new chipsets also helps extend battery life through optimized CPU and DSP cores. Audio and video solutions from QUALCOMM's Launchpad suite of integrated applications, Qcamera - Up to 12.0 megapixel camera sensors, a Qty- Qvideophone, and Qcamcorder video solutions, a Digital audio support for MP3, aacPlus and Enhanced aacPlus and also gpsOne position-location Assisted-GPS (A-GPS) solution

In the session, Qualcomm revealed that new chipsets will be built into future laptops, business travelers will cheer with this piece of good news.

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HTC's John Wang

HTC's Chief of Marketing, CMO - John Wang shared with us about HTC, innovation, branding and TouchFlo.

HTC's John Wang, Chief Marketing Officer, shared with us about the philosophy of HTC. The history of Magic Labs, HTC's own inhouse innovation department. It was a humbling session for many as majority of the time, no manufacturer that I know are as humble as they John Wang was, won many of us over. As HTC is the largest Windows Mobile handset manufacturer in the world and if you look at their stocks in Taiwan, it is a company growing by leaps and bounds, yet there is a humble side to HTC, he apologied that HTC has not made the best product out there interms of quality and built and that they need to get better and also need to improve even more, this is from someone whom's products are one of the best built products out there if not the best already. There is no other manufacturer in the world that I know would say this.

John shared with us about how TouchFlo came about. He started by sharing with us about how they thought long and hard about the next innovative products from HTC, and after long hours and late nights they were staring at the answer all along, they were staring at each other. They wanted the next product to be a personal experience, and they went back to basics to that very first touch as a baby who first came into the world. The TouchFlo philosophy is about making the experience a very basic and easy one, in the latest Touch Dual you can see incoporated into the finger/thumb gesture the unique experience of pushing, gliding the screens from one page to the next and accessing the individual programs. Touch is not just a mere User Interface (UI) overlay untop of the Windows Mobile operating system. It has certain technology built into it, that includes hardware components.

It was an interesting sessiong where John shared with us about HTC's commitment to bringing the best user experience they can with Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform and HTC's hardware and innovation, the best device for the marketplace.