CeBIT 2006 Preview

CeBIT 2006 begins tomorrow, and here’s a sneak preview of what to expect from the mobile phone industry. Yes, I know 3GSM was only last month, and CES 2006 the month before that, but this is the time of year when the whole consumer electronics industry shows off its products for the coming year. And it certainly doesn’t mean there’s nothing left for the mobile phone industry to announce.

Read on for a sneak CeBIT 2006 preview after the jump.

CeBIT 2006 Preview

Vodafone

Vodafone will be focusing on four things at CeBIT: mobile music, mobile TV, fixed network substitution with Vodafone At Home and UMTS broadband, and using some 3000 square metres of space to do so! As well as the obligatory HSDPA and Mobile TV demos (Vodafone will be announcing the addition of 5 new mobile TV channels to their mobile TV service), the mobile phone operator will also be presenting its new RadioDJ music service at CeBIT. It offers customized radio channels and enables Vodafone customers to compile their own play lists and choose the songs in the current programme that they want to listen to.

[Source: Vodafone]

Gigabyte

Gigabyte, more famous in the West, perhaps, for its motherboards than its mobile phones, will nonetheless be showing off some super-advanced handsets, featuring 7 megapixel cameras, GPS and analog TV. More details on these tasty products later.

VK Mobile

Not that well-known outside Korea, VK will be showing off 17 of its mobile phones, with the intention of expanding into other markets. Amongst the mobile phones on offer will be the 8.8 mm super slim VK 2000, the super-fast VK 5000, which transfers data three times faster than GPRS, and the amazing VK 2200, which, at only 12mm thick, sill manages to squeeze in a 4MP camera and MP3 player!

[Source: MobileMag]

Mobile TV over IP

With all the competing mobile TV standards that are emerging (DAB, DVB-T, DVB-S, DMB, MediaFlo…have I missed any?!), someone’s finally seen sense and is actively trying to create a generic mobile TV platform that can stream the same mobile TV content to a mobile TV handset, regardless of the technology being used. The Fraunhofer Institute and its partners, IRT, Siemens, Sony, T-Systems and Vodafone, have developed mobile TV over IP, which uses IP to deliver the content, hiding the underlying mobile TV standards from the mobile TV server. The partnership will demonstrate a live server with 16 TV program, whose signals will be transmitted in parallel over DVB-H, eDAB and UMTS.

Others

And a few other rumours…Fujitsu-Siemens should launch a 3G smart phone, the Pocket Loox T Pocket PC, which will run on Windows Mobile, and Toshiba will be announcing a high-end smartphone, though no details yet. Oh, and Samsung will be launching the SGH-i310, a mobile phone withe an 8GB hard disk inside! But that deserves a post all of its own!
[Source: new.com]

Summary

Compared with the other shows, not much has been leaked before CeBIT 2006. This may be because most of the big mobile phone companies have already announced their key products at CES 2006 and 3GSM, or it may be because that many companies, such as Toshiba, are holding back until the event itself. Sony have announced that they’re not attending CeBIT, as it’s “primarily a telecommunications event”, and so are sending Sony Ericsson along instead. Given this view, it’s a good bet that we’ll see some juicy announcements throughout the show. Keep reading MobileMentalism all this week for the announcements as they come in.