Irish well represented

The Ireland Pavilion in Hall 1 of Mobile World Congress was organised by Enterprise Ireland and showcased 20 Irish technology companies working in the mobile space as well as a research project based at the Telecommunications Software & Systems Group in Waterford Institute of Technology.

Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Micheál Martin said during a visit to the show that exports from Ireland's telecoms sector had more than doubled since 2005 and were set to hit €260 million this year.

For the Irish firms, the Mobile World Congress is one of the major events on their calendar. "We started preparing for this back in September because it is a key event for us," said Michael O'Brien, vice-president of marketing with Openmind Networks. "There are over 200 mobile operators in Europe and they are all here."

Although NewBay Software announced a contract with T-Mobile on the first day of the show, reported to be worth at least €5 million, most Irish companies held back big announcements for fear they would get lost in the noise of the event which attracts more than 1,300 exhibitors.

S3, the creator of software and silicon for consumer technologies, was still happy to say that its software has been selected by the world's largest handset maker, Nokia, to provide digital television services to its N810 internet tablet.

"For us it's great to be at the stage where we are sitting down with Nokia's commercial people," said John Maguire, general manager of S3's consumer mobile group.

"Because Nokia are doing this, it will spur other phone makers to do the same thing."

Elsewhere, Telefónica/02 demonstrated FitFone, an application running on a GPS-enabled Nokia phone that provides a health and fitness assessment.

Developed in Ireland by consultant neurophysiologist and sports physician, Dr Conor O'Brien, O2 Ireland has just completed a trial of the service with 200 customers and is now planning to commercially launch the service later this year.