Irish show off their wares and win award along the way

Irish businesses came to Barcelona to make the most of the congress's international exposure, writes CIARA O'BRIEN

THE MOBILE World Congress may have been a sea of green, but not all of it was due to Android. There were a number of Irish exhibitors at the Barcelona event, all trying to make the most of the international exposure that such a conference can bring.

More than 25 companies were exhibiting at the show, with 12 at the Enterprise Ireland stand alone.

Throughout the show, there was plenty of news to keep the Irish at the top of the agenda.Dublin-based start-up WINI Technologies even picked up an award. On Tuesday, the company was named as winner of the Aepona/Neustar Developer challenge at the congress.

It is a fully automatic taxi dispatch system that links available taxis with customers using existing mobile phone technology. Callers are located and drivers who are available and less than five minutes away will be assigned the job. Once the driver accepts the job, the customer is sent a text message to confirm details of the driver, car and taxi licence number. It also gives customers different options for paying, including charging it to credit cards or even paying through their mobile phone bill.

“It’s a simple solution,” said chief executive Paul O’Loughlin Kennedy.

WINI’s mobile operator strategist said there was potential for the business and other applications for the technology beyond the WINI Cab’s side of things.

O’Loughlin Kennedy said winning the award was a great honour. “Aepona and Neustar ran an application developers’ competition and we won,” he said. “It was a world-wide thing. We didn’t realise how big it was.”

The service, which is currently undergoing testing, is expected to go live in the summer.

Meanwhile, Newbay announced a deal with LG that will see its LifeCache social networking gateway across a range of consumer devices and in more markets. “For Newbay, it’s enormous in terms of the capacity to get our services out to a worldwide base,” said chief technology officer Tríona Mullane. “It’s the kind of deal we hope to replicate in multiple places.”

The deal means that not only will Newbay’s services be available from operators, but also from equipment manufacturers.

“Potentially to a degree, Apple has changed the landscape so much from a device perspective that the device manufacturers are themselves changing things quite significantly in terms of how they’re approaching it and the offerings they’re trying to provide to differentiate themselves.”

The deal with LG covers all device types, which means Newbay’s services could move beyond the mobile phone into tablets, or potentially other household electronics.

LG has also been at the forefront of another development: the 3D phone. With the unveiling of the Optimus 3D, Irish-based Movidius was well placed to reap the benefits of the wave of interest in mobile 3D. The company has developed a silicon chip that is integrated into phones, associated software that allows handset makers to deliver 3D content and consumers to make their own video and still images.

“We think it’s way ahead of what you get on a TV or in a cinema. You don’t require any glasses, that’s pretty fundamental for the experience,” said chief executive Seán Mitchell.

“You’re able to do that with a personal device. It’s a content-creation platform as well. You have the ability to take your own 3D videos and photographs, that opens up the user generated content side of things.”

The software also allows you to convert 2D to 3D content in real time.

Movidius is already planning ahead, designing its next product that customers should see samples of next year, Mitchell said. “The first challenge is breaking into the market but then you’re on a treadmill, so we’ll have to be investing very heavily in ongoing research and development and innovation to keep that technology ahead of where other people are.”

This will lead to some expansion. “We’re looking to expand pretty much all our locations, including Dublin,” Mitchell said. “It’s difficult enough to find people at the moment, but I think we have very much leading edge work going on.”

Another big theme of the conference was Near Field Communications, with manufacturers such as Samsung including it in its newest handsets. One Irish firm, Zapa Technology, has been rolling out the service to a number of Irish retailers as a way of generating loyalty among customers.

Its Zapa tags replace the plastic loyalty cards at branches of Insomnia, while Champion Sports has also shown interest in the technology. Zapa is anticipating an explosion of interest in the technology as a result of the latest developments.

Cubic Telecom used the show to announce a partnership with Ryanair, where the airline will offer its Maxroam SIM cards for sale, but the company is also set to revamp its pricing structure. The move will mean that consumers’ roaming bills are cut significantly and they will be able to receive calls free of charge while roaming.

“The change that’s going to happen over the next couple of months is really incredible,” said chief executive Pat Phelan. He said the altered pricing structure would be about 40 per cent of EU regulated roaming rates.

Also exhibiting with Enterprise Ireland was Kerry-based Altobridge, fresh from a deal with Indonesian mobile operator Indosat for its Lite-site systems, which is solar-powered and provides voice, text and mobile data services to isolated communities.

“Operators don’t want to deploy their systems into a place where they don’t make money or they perceive they won’t make money,” said Peter Tuomey, the company’s director of product management for remote communities. “The primary focus for us is meeting existing customers, because they all come here from every part of the world, or meeting prospects we’re already engaged with. It’s difficult to put senior executives on a plane and fly them halfway around the world for a one-hour meeting, but here, you can do it.”

Soccowave, meanwhile, showcased its technology that would allow mobile operators to make optimal use of its masts through its intelligent active antenna system, while the Now Factory was showcasing its Active Subscriber Intelligence, which would give operators more information about the data use on their network.