Barcelona witnessed the 2011 GSMA Mobile World Congress taking place from Monday to Thursday last week. Representatives from more than 200 countries were present and the list of keynote speakers included Google’s Eric Schmidt, Yahoo!’s Carol Bartz and Nokia’ Stephen Elop. Roughly 1,400 different companies hosted the hospitality and exhibition rooms while the App Planet part of the event comprised of 10,000 mobile application developers.
The Mobile World Congress, apart from recognizing the best in the industry, also showcases introduction of new innovations and addressing the key industry issues. The discussions this year revolved around the quality of mobile apps rather than the quantity, the Microsoft/ Nokia partnership as well as the current situation in Egypt.
Jonathan Ross hosted 2011’s awards ceremony, which featured a total of nine main categories. The categories included best mobile pp. best technology, best mobile device among other outstanding achievements. Angry Birds won two awards – overall best mobile app as well as best app for Apple platform. Bharti Infratel won the popular green mobile award for its Green Towers P7 Project that aims to address Namibia’s power shortage. Undoubtedly, iPhone 4 won the best mobile device award.
The device manufacturer of the year award went to HTC and the judges commented that HTC has made it to this level in the market from scratch, with the help of new marketing and branding and having a competitive portfolio of devices throughout many platforms. HTC has also been awarded for its brilliant customer service.
RIM’s Blackberry messenger application as well as Google Maps also won awards at the ceremony.
