COMMENT: What I learned at Mobile World Congress

Apple was everywhere and nowhere

At the Nokia press event on Monday morning there might as well have been a sign saying: 'This is all because of you, damned Apple', as the Finns presented their vision for the new Ovi app store.

But really Nokia is already in the app store business with Mosh, N-Gage, Music Store and so on. It's just had to re-name and tweak to catch the Jobs-inspired express train. Needless to say there was no Apple presence in Barcelona, although I did see a man eating a Golden Delicious.

You have to have an app store

Oh, you really should try one. They're all the rage and come in great colours. In addition to Nokia, there was Microsoft and Orange, while Amdocs and Comverse each revealed platforms for building them. Be great if they all work. But there's more to app stores than apps, developer support and UI. There's also billing. For me, that's the clincher. We all give our credit card details to Steve Jobs like giggling tweens, but will we be so compliant with everyone else?

Please, Mr Industry, don't call them widgets

There was loads of widget action at MWC. Samsung demonstrated a lovely 'drag to open' UI for widgets on its touchscreens, while Qualcomm reminded us all how its Plaza platform could seriously transform the mobile internet offering of operators. But let's not market them to the public using the word widgets. We will, though. Of course we will.

The Taiwanese want in

It used to be so simple getting round the handset stands. There were only five of them. Now Acer, HTC and others are changing all that. My trip to the Motorola stand made me want to cry. Just a few funny little KRZR phones and a lot of router type equipment. Haven't been that sad since the end of the Railway Children.

Projections aren't just for telecoms analysts

There were working projector phones on the TI and Samsung stands. Very exciting, but there really should have been an old projectionist on hand too, smoking and reading porn mags. That would have been true to the spirit of cinema.

Content people like to party

The MEF party on Monday was bloody rammed. Didn't get there till midnight, but it was heaving. Maybe our sector was celebrating the positive forecasts coming out of KPMG and Tellabs.

Operators are coming round to the idea of being pipes

The GSMA revealed its metrics project will go live this summer so that brands can get targeted access to consumers across all UK operators. It's the start of a monetisation process that involves selling network data, not content. Something operators really know how to do. Then there was the MEF's enablers initiative to get operators to define one API for age-verification, location, identity authentication, and so on. Great news.

The numeric keypad's number is up

Sure, there was still plenty of candybar and slider action, but the real momentum is with the touchscreen. Sony Ericsson's new Idou, Toshiba's TG01, LG's Arena and Samsung's high-def Omnia got all the attention.

Enough relevance already

White men in suits told Telecom TV reporters about how mobile services have to be 'personalised and relevant and all about you'. I'm sceptical. Yes, I want the choice to tweak my mobile web and app store preferences. But all that bollocks about making recommendations and learning my tastes for me? You're not my friend, you're an algorithm. Stop it!