Hot Asian tech event

I was fortunate enough to have attended the CommunicAsia 2005 exhibition which just concluded a couple of weeks back at the Singapore Expo Center. This four-day event had hundreds of exhibitors present to show off the coolest of handsets, fresh cutting-edge applications and latest hardware for constructing high-speed 3G networks. Bidshot Wireless Services and Chikka Asia Inc. were invited by CITEM to complement the strong local telecom contingent composed of PLDT, Smart Communications and Globe Telecom. We stood side by side with these telecom giants which manned their respective booths to showcase their finest products under one roof of the Philippine hub. This event, touted to be the region’s largest technology trade show, ended in very high spirits, solidifying the bullish prospects for our wireless space. It attracted almost 100,000 attendees as well as bigwigs from the IT, broadcasting and communications industries, almost half of them coming from overseas.

The conference also featured a three-day CEO Perspective panel session, where the head honchos of both carriers and vendors exchanged industry views with a very anxious audience. Our local telecom executives were visibly in full force, keeping their ears peeled for possible lessons. As you very well know, a telecom operator’s most valuable asset is its subscriber base and it is a continuous learning process on how to retain it. Although the talks were no doubt very educating, I skipped them and chose to remain on the ground where the "action" was.

Yes, indeed, there was a lot of action on the exhibit floor! The star exhibitors were once again the handset manufacturers such as Sony Ericsson, Samsung and Panasonic which obviously spent obscene amounts of money to elaborately decorate their booths in order to draw in crowds. From a handset manufacturer’s perspective, a booth was apparently defined as a two to three-story structure covering about 300 square meters as compared to our humble booth space of three square meters. All over the floor level were displays of shiny new handsets which guests could test and play with. To assist you in case of questions, there were numerous beautiful and friendly models hovering in close proximity. Motorola even scheduled twice-a-day fashion shows that served to highlight their buffet of new handset offerings. To further heighten visitors’ enthusiasm, on its ground floor were a transparent dressing room for the models which was continuously crowded by voyeurs, and an open bar to boot! The second and third floors served as private meeting rooms for business discussions with interested distributors and carriers.

It was information overload for me, but I will try to sift through my memory and provide you with some of the applications and handsets that stood out among the heap. A Singaporean company called Unified Communications hatched a new product called Background Music. This value-added service allows mobile subscribers to play music in the background, while they chat with friends. Users can select what songs to play or program certain songs for a specific caller. I learned this service will soon be launched in China, Singapore and Malaysia. I also spotted a service developed by a Norwegian company called Ipdrum that allows cellphone users to call anywhere in the world using Skype. As you very well know, Skype is that popular PC-based program used by 42 million people that allows you to make free calls over the Internet to anyone else in the world who also has Skype. To begin using the product, a user is required to one-time install a software application on his handset that would allow him to connect to the Skype Internet telephony network, after which the cellphone user can then be able to make and receive calls to any Skype user on his cellphone even without a wireless hot spot. I think a lot of the carriers would be concerned on how this would eat into their voice call revenues. Have you ever regretted sending out a text when you were emotional or tipsy? Well, from the Samsung booth I gathered that a new handset function will be made available where a user who had sent an SMS to another handset will be able to send a "delete" command to the recipient’s phone to erase the SMS from the handset’s memory if it is still unread. I learned, too, that Samsung has applied for a patent on this function.

On the handset front, a lot of juicy designs and features await aficionados. LG Electronics unveiled the LP5500, a five-megapixel with strobe flash handset on an innovative twist design, 18-mm. slim body. The 410 model, on the other hand, adopts the shape of a trendy European sports car and incorporates a sensor for a breathalyzer test to measure blood-alcohol level as well as TV remote control functions utilizing IrDA. Interesting features definitely aimed at the male market, I would say. For gaming fanatics, the SV360 and KV3600 3-D game phone models were introduced. Both are equipped with a 2.2-inch LCD screen, allowing users to play 3-D games with increased screen quality with its one million polygon/second graphic accelerator chip which processes data five times faster than current chips. These phones are also equipped with acceleration sensors that allow the user to control the game by moving it up and down or left to right, maximizing enjoyment. Not be outdone, Samsung also introduced its G1000 gaming phone. This gamer’s handset comes in a slide-up design and includes a 2.2-inch, 262,000-color TFT-LCD and a 1.3-megapixel camera. It also has a second graphic accelerator chip which includes a "mixed graphics" capability that displays 2-D and 3-D images simultaneously for greater visual effects. For Sony Ericsson, its Walkman mobile phone, the W600, caught my eye. It’s a unique, all-in-one compact device which can handle phone calls while the user listens to digital music on the move, capture quality megapixel images and video, enable 3-D game play as well as access the Internet and e-mail. The Walkman phone comes packaged with the Disc2Phone PC software that enables quick, convenient transfer of music of up to 10 full-length CDs onto the phone via a PC. Multiple file formats are supported and accessing music on the handset is quick via a direct music button that controls the media player. It will be raining more appetizing phones as Christmas fast approaches. So I advise that you better start putting away some cash every payday for your cellphone upgrade fund.

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Patrick R. Garcia is the managing director of Bidshot Wireless Services. For comments or suggestions, e-mail [email protected].