Making mobiles for the masses

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Fancy freshly brewed coffee in the morning, but don’t like the inconvenience of getting out of bed? Then you might want to get your hands on the wi-fi enabled coffee maker from chip-maker Qualcomm, which allows you to drip start your brew from your phone or tablet. Perhaps you have an errant cat that you need to keep tabs on? In which case the Tagg pet tracker is for you. Or how about a walking cane with built in GPS, Bluetooth and health monitoring sensors?

All this – and more – was on offer at this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Billed as “the world’s premier mobile industry event”, it packed more than 70,000 people amidst row upon row of shiny new products. Alongside the more curious “innovations” was the usual barrage of high-definition screens, feature-packed smartphones and hybrid “phablets”, with matching marketing superlatives. All in all, it was everything you might expect from a sector that has generated more than $1.6 trillion since last year’s show.

Source: BBC (link opens in a new window)

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Technology