The biggest telco at CTIA? The Ford Motor Company
This week's CTIA trade show in San Francisco was a small one alright. It didn't even make the big Moscone South Hall, but got shunted over to the more modest floorspace of Moscone West.
Aside from two noteworthy efforts by Samsung and Motorola, the stands were modest too – which left the way open for Ford to almost literally park its bus on the CTIA lawn.
Yep, Ford was all over this show. Its cars were present on every level (it loaded them into a freight lift, they told me, which was disappointing as I love the idea of them driving up the escalators).
And some of those motors are nearly as big as the buses we have in little Blighty.
So why was Ford there? Well, it wanted to show off its new Sync in-car telematics system.
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And, I suspect, sell a few models to the many rich white men prowling the halls.
I managed to get a good look at Sync, which is a very comprehensive system that divides the display into four quadrants: phone connectivity, navigation, climate control and entertainment.
These elements can be managed with controls on the steering wheel and also by voice, so you can ask it to 'call Steve Jobs' or 'play Kings of Leon' and it will. Providing you have Steve Jobs' phone number. And if you do, can I have it please?
Apparently Sync understands 10,000 words. Not sure if this includes swear words like wanker or Toyota.
From a short demo it was hard to tell how easy it would be to learn the system. And anyway I was distracted by the delicious idea of grabbing the keys and driving round the Moscone, ploughing into security software firms and feeling like the Dukes of Hazzard.
But it was clear that Sync is set-up for accessing content, but not acquiring it. All the music, for example, must be loaded from an iPod or USB stick.
So it falls short of the vision that was given to me a few years back by Gracenote and Omnifone that cars would soon come with 'free' music streamed via the cloud straight into the system.
Neither were there downloadable apps, as are being mooted by BMW's Connected Drive concept.
Although it should be said that Ford has released APIs so that app makers can link their software wirelessly to the in-car system.
This 'AppLink' idea has been adoped by Pandora and a few others meaning that you can run these apps, keep your phone in your pocket and navigate them with the dashboard controls.
As a keen cyclist, anything that minimises driver distraction is fine by me. But, truth be told, I'm still terrified.
I mentioned my concerns about being hit to the girl doing the demo. She told me – in all seriousness – that the huge jeep-like cars are a little lighter than they used to be.
