Following International CTIA wireless 2012

Attending conferences, especially profile ones, is very useful: as they say, show yourself and see others. This time I managed to visit on the other side of the ocean, at the International CTIA wireless 2012 conference, which will be discussed in this topic. Under cat impressions, photos, digest of conference announcements. It will be interesting.

In fact, the event was divided into 2 main sections: exhibition and forum. In addition, several partner events, both paid and free, all went in parallel to the forum. Since it was possible to spend most of the time at the exhibition, it is probably worth starting with it.

The conference center in which the event was held is a large-scale building with a length of more than a kilometer, 3 floors, within whose walls you can clearly hold much more significant events. Indeed, despite the fact that, according to the organizers, more than 1000 companies were exhibited , together with the forum the whole event occupied less than half of the available building area.

Unlike the Mobile World Congress (hereinafter MWC) in Barcelona, ​​the absence of the need to move between the pavilions was extremely convenient, with a stable heat standing on the street. If we continue to compare with MWC, we can safely say that the exhibition part of the event is not only smaller in size, but also less extensive in terms of stands of the represented companies.

Firstly, companies such as Samsung, Nokia and Microsoft did not exhibit at the exhibition. The manufacturers of operator systems were almost completely absent, so the exhibition was held without the CBOSS Girl attraction. Most of the companies preferred small standard stands of 10 meters, which allowed to create orderly rows and fit a huge number of companies in a relatively small area. Those companies that nevertheless built larger booths could not save the situation and against the background of the huge structures that they created at MWC, everything looked more than modest. Some even compensated for this by dancing .

The attentive reader will ask, and who was at the exhibition then? The exhibition was divided into thematic sectors, the main of which were manufacturers of equipment for operators (antennas, generators, etc.), and many brought this equipment with them; they were followed by manufacturers of test equipment and related technologies to measure the network from all possible sides; The list was completed by the manufacturers of Chinese phones that offered their equipment for every taste, from dams to smartphones. But all the records were broken by manufacturers of "skins" and peripherals for Apple products: from all sorts of options, it was simply rippling in the eyes.It was offered as simple colorful cases, as well as with inlaid semiprecious stones, impact / radio / no-understand-what-protective coatings, and even the admin version with an opener for beer (of course, also with its own software).
At the same time, developers of mobile platforms or mobile software were presented more than modestly: a small glass "aquarium", which explained the advantages of developing for NOOK from Barnes & Nobles, and next to them were several tables with software developed for different software platforms. This is the end of the list. No company conducted any courses, lectures, or anything like that.

To continue the analogy with MWC, the cut of the represented companies differs polar. At MWC there were only a couple of modest stands with peripherals for the Iphone, the bulk of the devices were all the same eminent brands, which traditionally represented new products, and not Chinese manufacturers. In Barcelona, ​​many companies held lectures for developers, and indeed a separate App Planet pavilion was allocated for developers. At CTIA 2012, there were also no representatives of foreign operators who usually occupy huge stands at MWC, so, against the background of the absence of large eminent phone manufacturers, the word international in the name of the event seems more than strange and is justified only by a large number of phone and peripheral manufacturers from Asia.

The "night" life was also not pleasing: many companies either did not have parties or carefully hid them, which ultimately led to the fact that those who managed to get there were almost empty and communication outside the framework of the event, which often leads to the most important contacts did not work out. The situation was saved by Bourbon Street, with an infinite number of pubs with live music, where exhausted workers in the mobile industry were resting.

In defense of the organizers, it is worth describing the place itself and a fairly competent organization. Also, there were some announcements and events that enlivened the event a bit (and I'm not talking about the dances mentioned earlier).
Mastercard introduced a new tool, which demonstrates the willingness of different countries to mobile payments, the meaning of which, as a representative of the mobile payment industry, was little understood. The level of preparedness of Colombia, Germany, Russia, Nigeria and Vietnam is almost the same, while the level of distribution of credit cards or the normal banking system in these countries is different. And the remaining indicators do not have a clear static base and are clearly made to create the possibility of a game with the final indicators of a country. In fact, only the infrastructure affects the use of this or that technology: SMS payments in Russia are much more popular than in the USA, where the main share falls on cards and PayPal (again, via cards). But the willingness of the Russian citizen to buy something virtual on the Internet for SMS can not be called a willingness to mobile payments via cards, since all other payments will still be made in cash. By the way, at the exhibition there were representatives of Qiwi, who showed their terminals to the public. To the quite logical question of why they are needed in the USA, the expected response was given that credit cards and PayPal work well for residents, but non-residents, who are also numerous, have problems paying bills and prefer cash as the main method payment.

As mentioned earlier, the event did without big announcements. Some news from Nokia, the new ambitious company PLUM and some others. The most notable event of the forum was the speech of Bill Clinton on the last day of the event, which noted the super important influence of the mobile industry on the world economy and politics.

Summing up, we can say that the event described is clearly behind its competitor, and for those who visit the MWC every year, CTIA is no longer necessary. To get a complete picture of the forum part of the event and confirm this conclusion, you should read this post. (eng.), the general meaning of which is that while CTIA remains the inner hangout of American operators, the event does not wait for a bright future.