The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain is one of the biggest events in the mobile world.  Anyone related to the field of wireless, be it mobile developers, technology leaders, OEMS, carriers, aggregators, mobile tools providers etc, all descend on to this little world in Fira Barcelona to discuss the next BIG thing in Wireless.

I had the opportunity to be there this year, and it was memorable for several reasons. I got to meet and talk to some really bright people, discuss business opportunities, witness quite a few new platforms and devices, do a presentation at the Symbian Foundation booth and participate (and be selected as the best contributor in the Mak'n Money discussion) in discussions on the last day of the event with WIP JAM.

As far as the announcements are concerned, there were many, but those Adobe and Nokia related were probably of the most relevent to me.

Adobe today, is living upto it's commitment of last year in focusing on the Mobiles area. This time in MWC, Adobe made several announcements which developers may find extremely exciting and motivating to take it forward as a platform to look forward to in 2009.

So what were the key points announced during this event? The answer is several of them and they are all listed below -

• Flash shipped on 1 Billion devices (cummulative): Flash Lite shipped on 40% of all new handsets in 2008

• Public beta of the Distributable Player Solution - the ability to distribute mobile apps with the latest Flash Lite 3.1 runtime. The regions include US, Spain, Italy, UK and yes India too (reason to celebrate because devs can now monetize from their apps)

• Launch of Featured Applications from leading content providers at m.adobe.com (live now)

• The Flash Lite Developer Challenge - a contest with cash prizes totaling $100,000

• The Open Screen Project Fund - a $10 Million market development fund open to developers worldwide. You are invited to submit your ideas, which will then be taken up by the OSP commitee

• Palm joining the Open Screen Project and intends to ship with Flash 10 devices

Nokia too announced their OVI Store, allowing developers to publish and sell their content through Nokia's global application market.

I hope to write about the announcements and my experience a little more in detail in the coming posts...but for now there is already a lot to look forward to :) 

Mariam