Well, CES 2006 has ended, and a flurry of mad gadget announcements has ended with it.  So who were the winners and losers far from the mobile phone industry?

 

Samsung

 

Undoubtedly the star of the show was Samsung, who announced so many new mobile phones, it’s hard to see what else they’re going to release this year! New Samsung mobile phones announced at CES 2006 included six slim phones, phones with WiFi, WiMAX, a satellite TV phone, a smartphone, the world’s fastest HSDPA phone (3.6 Mbps download), and nine new mobile TV phones covering every major mobile TV standard. In fact, there seems to be no feature left for Samsung to integrate into their glorious devices. I still haven’t covered many of these, so expect lots more details over the next few days.

 

More on the mobile phone winners and losers at CES 2006 after the jump.

 

 

The Mobile Phone Winners and Losers at CES 2006

 

Motorola

 

Another huge success was Motorola, who didn’t release as many mobile phones as Samsung, but still stole a lot of the show. Not only was a new ROKR launched (surprisingly called the Motorola ROKR E2), it was launched without Apple’s iTunes, instead coming with Motorola’s own iRadio.  Whilst this means the phone and music download service is just another ‘me-too’ service along with many others, its freedom from the constraints Apple placed on the original ROKR at least gives this new ROKR 2 a sporting chance.

 

Motorola also scored big in the promiscuity stakes, putting itself about with virtually every big brand it could think of. There were deals done with Google, Kodak, Nikko (see image, left, courtesy of Engadget) and Oakley, as well as products that integrated your Motorola with your car or home stereo, or your iPod.

 

Unlike Samsung, no technological tour de force on display, but an imaginative CES 2006 for Motorola nonetheless.

 

Sony Ericsson

In contrast to Samsung and Motorola, Sony Ericsson were much quieter, but still scored a notable hit with the new Sony Ericsson W810 Walkman phone. Each Walkman phone seems to get better than the last, and this one seems to be about perfect.  It oozes style, has great features, and now has proper music-specific buttons on the front of a re-designed handset layout. Looks like it’ll be the perfect Walkman phone.

 

Other than new speakers a few other accessories, though, Sony Ericsson made no other announcements.  A fair CES 2006 for them, then.

 

Nokia

Nokia, unfortunately, were even quieter still, announcing simply a new set of Bluetooth ear slugs, Bluetooth added to a couple of existing Nokia mobile phones, and, er….well, that’s it! Fortunately they’d announced so many new Nokia phones in the run up to Christmas, all of which look tantalizingly glorious, that we can let them off, but it was still a disappointment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LG were the real losers of the show. Not only did they not make any new announcements (which we can forgive, as, to be fair, they too released a huge variety of new LG phones before CES 2006), they banned people from taking photos of their products. This is simply unforgivable - shame on you, LG.

 

Google and Yahoo

Surprises of the show as far as mobile phones are concerned were Google and Yahoo, both of whom announced plans to enter the mobile space in a big way.  Motorola will be including a Google button on its future phones, and Google has plans to provide video content for the web and mobile phones, while Yahoo will have a Yahoo button on certain Nokia phones, and an interesting new service called Yahoo Go! that aims to merge the web and the mobile phone into one seamless Yahoo-branded service. It’s going to be an interesting 2006!

 

So that’s my impression of the winners and losers in the world of mobile phones at CES 2006, admittedly from the perspective of a distant blogger.  There’s still loads more to write up about, as the details and implications of all the announcements sink in, but I think that’s a nice summary of events. Let me know if you agree, or think differently.