Billy Tompson: MWC 2011 day 3: full coverage

Wednesday's MWC brings the Schmidt spillover, Motorola, analysts on HTC, Microsoft on Windows Phone and more

9.14am: (That's Central European Time, not London's GMT of course..)

? Eric Schmidt's keynote speech last night was a sight more interesting than Steve Ballmer's. So good we split it into two stories: last night's on his vision of the smartphone future, and another on all sorts of elements - HTML5, Android, ChromeOS (being pushed as "virus-free"), and plenty more. Worth a read.

? That HTC tablet from yesterday? Tony Cripps, Ovum principal analyst:

"HTC's first tablet ? the Android-powered HTC Flyer ? is a cautious first move by the company into the space and not one that it expects to compete on a volume basis with its smartphones. Nonetheless, the Flyer is noteworthy in bringing some innovation ? and even some retro features ? to the space.

"On the innovation side, the Flyer features HTC Watch, a video download and instant playback service that will live or die depending on the size and breadth of the content catalog HTC is able to build for it. It may also benefit from the partnership HTC announced last week with OnLive for online gaming. Either way, HTC deserves credit for pushing its own boundaries and acting on the need to bring more than just hardware to market if it is to remain competitive.

"Retro-wise, the Flyer's "HTC Scribe" pen-based input option ? a first on 'lite OS' tablet devices, if not Windows models ? may seem anachronistic given the current obsession with multi-touch (it supports that too!) but may well end up being widely copied if its utility can be adequately demonstrated."

To which one can only say that "if" covers a multitude of possibilities.

? Three ecosystems? That's what Stephen Elop (head of Nokia) and Steve Ballmer (head of Microsoft) keep on saying about the smartphone business - that there's only Apple, Android and now them. Which of course leaves out RIM, which happens to sell rather a lot of smartphones all around the world.

So it was good to see Jim Balsillie, co-chief executive of RIM, asked about this on Reuters TV. His response:

"I think there are a lot of different environments out there. Blackberry is number one in UK. Number one in LATAM [Latin America] and number one in North America and number two worldwide. We've grown 300,000 per cent internal organic [ie without acquisition] in the last 14 years, but we have to earn our credibility every single day and work hard and try to be relevant."

Translation: screw you guys and your "three ecosystem" stuff and remind us again how many Windows Phone handsets have actually sold.

Ah, the slings and arrows of business. Meanwhile, later today we're seeing Sanjay Cha, chairman and CEO of Motorola Mobility (think: Motorola Xoom tablet) - any questions in particular you want asked? Fire away.

10.43am: Meanwhile, back at the stock market, RIM's stock (the blue line) is up a few per cent on the past few days, while Microsoft (red) and Nokia's (green) are still down on the week - you can see people buying into the RIM stock as the news breaks about Nokia and Microsoft.

Maybe call it "revenge of the unmentioned".

11.27am: Smartphones with Intel chips will start appearing this year, according to Paul Otellini, chief executive of Intel. No further detail as yet - he said it during a panel discussion - but that's going to be interesting to see. Intel certainly needs to start doing something in this area (remember, smartphones now outsell PCs.

But Intel's problem has been that it simply doesn't have efficient enough chips - certainly not when compared to ARM's offerings for the sector. That's why Microsoft has announced that it's going to get the next version of Windows to run on ARM, and why the Atom chip which has done so well for Intel in netbooks (and I'll have some more on netbooks in a subsequent blogpost: reports of their death have been, er, exaggerated ..by me) isn't appearing in any of those damn tablet things that are breaking out like nits in a nursery.

Which smartphones, which manufacturers? No word just yet. We'll await.

Right - I'm off to get some hands-on time with a Meego tablet and, with luck, HP WebOS tablets and see Sonos's Android app.

11.47am: Ah, CNet has the Otellini story. Who are those handsets coming from? "We can't preannounce our customers. I think it's going to be pretty exciting."

Gnnh. OK.

Otellini defended the PC business' 17% growth last year, and said customers won't settle on just one machine.

"No single device wins," Otellini said. "We don't see an environment where one machines satisfies all needs. At least for the next four to five years, we're likely to see multiple devices and multiple form factors simply because people want to do multiple things."

And in an echo of that famous scene from the Graduate....

Asked during a panel discussion after his remarks where he'd invest with the intent for returns over the next five to ten years, Otellini had a quick response: "Batteries."

"We can't keep using lithium ion," Otellini said. "It'll be silicon-based, higher-capacity, longer life. Whoever invents that is going to make a fortune."

OK, now really off to find those Meego tablets. No idea is they'll be demo'd by Mrs Robinson.

1.48pm: Some quickies.

? Went to see the MeeGo demos. It's interesting, but for PC magazine to call MeeGo on a netbook "the worst product ... at Mobile World Congress so far" is unfair, and misses the point: MeeGo isn't about doing computer grunt work, it's about a few simple things done well. (The netbooks showing it did seem to have had better days.) To my mind it's more like BeOS - focussed around media, internet (and also social networks). Interesting to watch, and Intel echoes what it's been saying about "disappointed" over Nokia's decision to put it on a lifeboat behind the ship (I paraphrase about the lifeboat).

? Sonos, the stream-music-around-your-house company, is introducing an Android app in March. It has taken a year to implement and will work on versions from 2.1 upwards. Neatly, it can access the hardware volume buttons on an Android phone (can't do that on the iPhone) and also take speech input to find artist or track names - which is very cool.

Interesting points: there isn't much demand yet from Windows Phone 7 users - but nor yet from Android tablet users. They'll weigh up where the demand comes from before they develop for the next ones. The Sonos Android app won't load on 7-inch tablets like the Samsung Galaxy because it's not built for that screen size. But no doubt someone will figure out how to get around that.

And: Spotify, the music subscription service, is doing very well on Sonos - the churn rate (how much people give up subscriptions v how many new subscriptions you get) is tiny, at 1% or 2%, compared to the much higher levels on other platforms. Likely reason: Sonos Spotify users can listen to it all over the place, so they don't feel like they're missing out on music.

? HP is showing off its TouchPad tablet, which looks quite neat: the UI and organisation (using "stacks") is really clever, organising what you're doing into related pages from different apps. My observation: the hard part is simply going to be getting developers - HP may need to encourage a lot of web app (HTML5/CSS/JScript/JSON) development in the short term. But as I said the other day, if HP can't capitulate on Nokia's hassles then it doesn't deserve a place in the smartphone business.

7.06pm: Spoke to Motorola chief executive Sanjay Jha, who defended the $800 price of the Motorola Xoom on the basis that the top-end iPad costs $729 (that's 3G + Wi-Fi) and the Xoom (which will be, remember, the first 10-inch Android tablet with Honeycomb) will be software-upgradeable to connect to LTE (Long Term Evolution) mobile - which should run at 50Mbps.

And he said that there will be lower-end Xooms with Wi-Fi only, but he's not going to announce prices yet because that makes them a target for competitors.

Tons more, but they're throwing us out of the only place in MWC that has connectivity. Ah, the irony. Signing off for now, but join us for the embers on Thursday..

Charles Arthur

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