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3GSM World Congress Asia

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VoicenData Bureau
New Update

3GSM World Congress Asia, the sister event to the

Europe-located 3GSM World Congress, has come to a finish. Delegates and visitors

from more than 90 countries participated in this five-day event on the Asian

mobile communications calendar, the last to be held in Singapore, as the show

moves to Macau, China in 2007.

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Inaugurating the event, Rob Conway, CEO of GSMA said,

"Asia is a hot bed of innovation for the mobile world, there is an

astonishing array of talent dedicated to developing new ideas for the market.

However, it's a complex market and players with interesting or astonishing

ideas have to fight hard to be heard. These awards provide the best platform in

the mobile space for great ideas to get the recognition and attention they

deserve."

On this occasion, the GSM Association (GSMA) announced a

unique and prestigious addition to its established Global Mobile Awards! 'Asia

Mobile Innovation Awards 2006', a brand new awards scheme for innovative

products or services, judged and presented for the first time at Asia's

premier mobile communications event, the GSMA's 3GSM World Congress Asia 2006.

Microimage won the award for most innovative mobile

application or content and Open-Plug for most innovative technology development.

The competition, sponsored by Ericsson, is exclusively for young, small and

start-up companies across Asia, developing exciting, innovative technologies,

applications and content for the fast moving mobile space. Microimage has

developed the world's first patented local language messaging and content

browsing application to provide customized, local language support for

entry-level applications on mobile devices in emerging markets.

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Open-Plug's ELIPS is the first open software framework

designed for mobile phones, which enables ELIPS-based handsets to be tailored

and configured far more quickly according to the requirements of operators.

Microimage and Open-Plug were judged winners by a prestigious

judging panel comprising senior representatives from Bharti-Airtel, KTF, Smart

Communications, SpinVox — winners of this year's global innovation award —

and Ericsson after a round of 'elevator' pitches at the 3GSM World Congress

Asia in Singapore.

Also in this occasion, Asian operators teamed up with the

GSMA to rollout personal instant messaging. Talking in this context, Rob Conway,

CEO of the GSMA said, "By enabling a rapid-fire text-based dialogue, soon

to be enriched with pictures, music and even video, IM is further extending the

array of communications options open to mobile phone users". Highlighting

India's stance on this Manoj Kohli, president of Bharti Airtel said,

"India's mobile operators are aiming to have achieved interoperability at

a technical level by February 2007 and we in Bharti Airtel are greatly excited

about the potential for Mobile IM in India".

At the 3GSM World Congress, GSMA also come up with a proposal to make mobile

broadband a standard feature in notebook computers. Earlier this year, the GSM

Association and Intel announced an initiative to facilitate and drive the

adoption of the GSM family of technologies in notebooks. This program has since

become an industry-wide initiative. Participants in the initiative include

leading mobile operators: Cingular Wireless, O2, Orange, TeliaSonera, TIM,

T-Mobile and Vodafone as well as major manufacturers and suppliers of mobile,

software and PC equipment; Check Point, Dell, Fujitsu, Gemalto, Intel, Lenovo,

Microsoft, Option Wireless, Novatel Wireless, Qualcomm, Sierra Wireless and Sony

Ericsson.

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