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Symbian Blog: Mobile World Congress Category

MWC over for another year

Feb 22nd by andrewkl Retweet Share on Facebook

So Mobile World Congress is over for another year and this one was definitely both busy, successful and fun. There was so much going on it was hard to take it all in. The release of Skype for Symbian was an obvious highlight, as was the release of, and a chance to play with, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz. And I would highly recommend listening to Symbian’s Sebastian Brannstrom having a very interesting discussion about Symbian being open source with Leo Laporte and Randal Schwartz.

The Symbian board had another meeting which by all reports was very successful and members present relished the chance to present on our booth – as well as taking the opportunity to run off with one of our Symbian ducks as soon as we turned a blind eye! All in all, everyone on the Symbian team was involved in lots of meetings, briefings and discussions throughout the week, and there were plenty of promising new relationships formed. The future looks exciting!

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Ideas at MWC

Feb 19th by Haydn Retweet Share on Facebook

My name is Krzysztof Kucharewicz. I’m a Symbian developer, and I take an active part in the Symbian community. I’m watching with curiosity the changes that Symbian has made recently, and I’m trying to be the part of that movement as well. Why do we need Symbian Ideas?

I spent the Tuesday morning this week volunteering in the ideas.symbian.org lounge at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The place, full of soft pouffes, maintained in yellow-white-black design, and also decorated with huge bath-ducks (that’s a Symbian’s mascot these days) attracted many business people, who either wanted to rest for a while with a tasty-yet-free coffee (the bartender didn’t share recipes, so no open-source here, Symbian ;-) ), have a little chat in this quieter place, or just use the free WiFi access.

Having an opportunity to talk to some of them I tried to inquire for ideas they could share with Symbian to improve future devices and our experience with more and more capable smartphones. That’s no surprise that among people who visited the lounge many used Symbian (and in particular Nokia) phones for a while, but abandoned them for the sake of BlackBerries or iPhones. The very common words repeated in these talks were that these competitors bring speed, simplicity of the software (watch the huge scrolling menus) and intuitiveness (shall I mention kinetic scrolling yet?). We’ve heard it before but they wanted to converse and share their view.

There were of course some hardcore Symbian users or partners, who had very precise ideas what they need from the platform, and knowing where it’s going they just wanted to take advantage of the new business opportunity. Read more »

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Vivaz Pro

Feb 14th by Haydn Retweet Share on Facebook

Sony Ericsson launched the Vivaz Pro this evening at Mobile World Congress, one of the first big launches of this year’s event. The phone, due to go on sale later this year (Q2 seems likely), packs the same 8.1 Megapixel camera and HD video recording as the Vivaz, announced in January. Naturally it is powered by Symbian. The Pro version comes with a Qwerty keyboard. But that’s not all that marks it out as a great device.

One image doesn’t do it justice. Go to the Sony Ericsson MWC blog for a little bit of detail but come with me through some of the past information releases, recent blog posts and videos for a lot more. Read more »

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Come see us at MWC

Feb 14th by andrewkl Retweet Share on Facebook

Mobile World Congress opens tomorrow in Barcelona, Spain and 50,000 people will be coming together to discuss, collaborate and discover virtually everything in the world of mobile. Of course Symbian is here as well, so if you’re in town from tomorrow until Thursday and wandering around near the Fira de Barcelona-Montjüic make sure you come in and visit us.

The Symbian booth is in Hall 1 booth 1J34, where Symbian members and app developers are showcasing their products, apps and services. The Symbian lounge is upstairs in Hall 1.1 room 1.1HS72, where you can pull up a beanbag and relax, contribute your great suggestion for the future of mobile to the ideas tree. Read more »

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Opportunities at MWC

Dec 8th by Lauren Sarno Retweet Share on Facebook

According to a recent membership poll, 63 Symbian members will be attending Mobile World Congress 2010. Of these, 31 will have a booth, and an additional 16 will have a meeting room or pavilion.

Symbian Foundation will also be there. Our goal will be to promote the Symbian community. We’re planning a raft of activities that will help attendees discover members and their technologies.

Booth – We will use our booth to point attendees to member booths, display member presentations and feature their logos.

Media lounge – Press and bloggers will be there. If you are a member, what would you like them to hear about you? Send us your success stories and plan to spend time in the lounge.

Birds of a Feather sessions – We have conference room slots we’re opening to members for informal seminars about technologies, roadmaps, business issues – anything you want.

Party – Be part of the celebration of our first year as a successful community.

We need your help in promoting the community!

We will need volunteers to staff our activities. We can give away one free ticket to Mobile World Congress in return for 6-8 hours of volunteer time, and we’ll be giving kudos to volunteers in our press releases.

If you don’t have a booth, volunteer and be part of ours. While you’re on booth duty, you can promote your own products and services, as well as talk about the benefits of Symbian.

Along with volunteers, we will also need sponsorship for some of our activities. Sponsoring our media lounge or party will help increase your presence at the show.

If you’re interested in any of these opportunities, let me know.

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