In November, Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine attended the cellular industry’s semi-annual trade show in San Francisco, California. The CTIA show offers an inside look at how the industry sees its own future.

Steve Ballmer’s keynote

Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer kicked off the conference with an interesting keynote speech. The major announcement in his presentation was a new mobile device management suite of programs for large enterprises. This set of applications is not from Microsoft, but rather from the start-up company Enterprise Mobile (enterprisemobile.com). The System Center Mobile Device Manager (discussed further on page 68) allows IT departments to control the deployment and ongoing management of Windows Mobile devices accessing the corporate network. Ballmer indicated that this is a key to penetrating large enterprises where there is currently a battle between the end users and the IT department for control of the smartphones used within the company.

More interesting than this announcement, however, was Ballmer’s vision for the future of mobility. He said that Microsoft was working on creating a platform that would allow users to have one device for both business and personal use. I found this to be an interesting idea, especially considering that Windows Mobile, in its current form, does not lend itself to being used for both uses at the same time. In fact, this part of the presentation seemed at odds with the announcement of tools allowing IT departments even greater control over the devices. No specifics were given, and we don’t know how Microsoft plans to solve the issue of a user wanting to maintain both a corporate calendar and a personal one on the same handheld device. Currently, both would be merged so that, for example, your child’s soccer game would appear on your corporate calendar. Also, in order to compete with the likes of the Apple iPhone, users would need to be able to load personal applications and media that might not be within corporate IT policy. Perhaps Microsoft plans to introduce future devices with separate “business” and “personal” accounts “firewalled” from each other through log in screens and robust resource management. Such a feature would be welcomed by every IT department dealing with mobile devices.

Smaller CTIA show floor

There seems to be a trend at trade shows lately for companies to forgo the show floor and instead hold private meetings. This certainly seemed to be the case for CTIA this year, as the number of vendors was quite small. But there were a few things worth reporting.

AOL’s MyMobile software gives mobile users better access to AOL features.

AOL previewed their AOL MyMobile Beta software. This is a Windows Mobile program that gives the user access to AOL e-mail, Instant Messaging, MapQuest and more, all specifically designed around the handheld’s small screen and buttons.

AskMeNow’s new mobile interface makes it easier to text them questions and receive answers.

AskMeNow, a company I reported on before, had a booth where they were demonstrating their new information search engine. When the company started, they provided a service where the user would place a voice call and leave a message asking a question such as “where is the nearest Starbucks to Solvang, California.” The user would then receive one or more SMS text messages with the answer or answers to the question. As you can imagine, this was rather labor-intensive. Instead, AskMeNow now has you enter a text message of your own with the question and then you get back the answer in a text message reply. The company also offers search tools for internal enterprise applications.