Mobile is as mobile does

As you may have been able to tell from the avalanche of mobile phone hardware and software news this week, the Mobile World Congress is going on in Barcelona. So far the big news (in my eyes) has been on the operating system front with Microsoft’s announcement of Windows Phone 7, which looks like an impressive update to the long-in-the-tooth Windows Mobile, and Symbian^3 (cubed? 3? I don’t know), which will be the first fully open source release of Symbian since it was spun off into the Symbian Foundation. There are even rumors that Microsoft’s new non-smart phones will be sporting a Silverlight UI, suggesting they won’t be dumb phones.

As for hardware, it is raining goodies in all flavors as HTC, LG, Samsung and others throw out announcement after announcement of new phones which special attention to the smart phone market. This of course means that brand new location aware devices will be rolling out over the next year. Not all of these devices will be smart phones as more than one computer/tablet manufacturer is on hand in Barcelona to highlight the other mobile devices that are vying for your pay check.

Don’t think that MWC is just about the hardware and OS announcements. There is a heavy helping of apps that are being announced this week for every smart phone platform that can be imagined. We will of course have a wrap up of the goodies that have caught our eye this weekend on the podcast, so check back Sunday for our take on some of these announcements.