What's happening at the World Mobile Congress 2010?

I don’t know about you, but judging by its title the Mobile World Congress (MWC) sounds like a painfully dry affair. It conjures images of sales meetings, with slideshows about demographics, advertising saturation, and maximising CTRs.

The sort of place where you can discuss inflation with people who have a genuine opinion about it, and where a briefcase is mandatory. Yawn-o-rama.

But the rumours building around this year’s MWC make it sound pretty exciting, with everything from the seeing first shot fired in the impending next gen smartphone wars to the launch of new mobile operating systems that will tie in with living room games consoles.

So here’s a quick look at some of the hottest expectations for what’s going to help avoid the MWC turning into a high tech insurance seminar.

Microsoft is looking like it’s planning to hijack the show at this year’s MWC. Windows Mobile 7 has been on the slate so long we’d completely stopped caring about it, but over the past few weeks it’s reared its head with renewed vengeance - and that’s undoubtedly no coincidence.

WinMo 7 promises to be a complete reboot of the aging Microsoft PPC platform, bringing in a whole new interface more akin to the multimedia glamour of the Zune HD (which will also be making an appearance), and will be far more willing to chat with your PC and even your Xbox 360.

A stylish makeover is just what WinMo needs, and MWC is the catwalk where we’ll see the end results.

Nokia Maemo

We’ve been trying really hard to get excited about Nokia’s new OS, as seen in the excellent N900, but the Finnish mobile giant isn’t making it easy. Nokia is looking like it’s scaled its presence at MWC right back, and the N87 has already turned out to be a red herring.

It’s hard to imagine the world’s largest handset manufacturer not having something to show off at a gathering like this, however, so it’s my guess that Maemo will make a significant and powerful appearance in one form or another - if only to make up for Nokia’s otherwise limited profile.

The MWC 2010 is undoubtedly going to look like an Isaac Asimov convention, what with all the Androids everywhere. Google’s platform has a benefit that no other system can boast, and that’s its accessibility to each and every handset manufacturer out there.

Most are going to have some kind of new Android device on their arm, from Sony Ericsson’s miniature QWERTY-equipped device that looks like it’s going after BlackBerry’s jugular to an army of new HTC handsets ready to have new company logos slapped on them.

It won’t be any one device in particular, so much as the sheer saturation of smartphones working to put rich features into the hands of mobile users who’ve yet to get on the bandwagon.

Samsung has dabbled in the shallow end of the Android pool, but now it’s gearing up to offer its own platform to manufacturers, known as Bada.

News on this front is rife, but still quite vague. Clearly Samsung is waiting to let Bada loose at the MWC, and is expected to be ready with a host of developer tools and some hot hardware to host its new software and app store system.

It’s coming to the smartphone fight very late in the day, but Samsung is well known for its attention to detail and is likely to surprise attendees with some unique features that will get the devs onboard. This newcomer is likely to prove itself very quickly, and it’ll all begin at the MWC.

It’s not fair to say the Nexus One launched with a fizz instead of a pop, but it was distinctly reminiscent of the T-Mobile G1 (the first device to sport Android). The real money is on the continuation of the Nexus range, and if we know Google (and we don’t) these devices will be coming thick and fast.

The MWC is the perfect place for the internet giant to kick the Nexus range hard up the arse with the unveiling of the Nexus Two, which is currently rumoured to be a Motorola-made handset with a slide-out QWERTY.

What’s interesting here is that Motorola is likely to be competing against itself, and so is likely to be the underground winner of MWC, regardless of which company takes the credit.

It wouldn’t be a mobile get together if the hardware bods didn’t show off their bizarre concepts in an effort to compete for the most forward looking company/out-of-control R&D department award.

There’ll be a lot of next gen smartphones promising HD video, and processors that are measured in gigahertz, while others attempts to sell the notion of pico-projectors, and augmented reality.

Exactly what will appear is anyone’s guess, but most will be pegged for the Japanese market where hardware chic is more important than being able to make a telephone call. Stuff like this separable handset.

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