One of the most popular topics at this year’s 3SM World Congress, the world’s largest wireless trade show, is whether new competitors for the mobile email market will succeed in winning a significant percentage of the business that is most associated with the Blackberry.

Research In Motion, which makes the Blackberry, says it will remain the standard. The CEO of RIM and Microsoft’s marketing manager spoke to Reuters’ Matt Cowan at the conference in Barcelona.

Reuters’ correspondent Matt Cowan reports from a camera phone from the floor of the world’s largest mobile phone trade fair - The 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona.

 Nokia and Sanyo Electric Co. on Tuesday said they plan to form a joint venture to develop and make mobile phones for the CDMA standard, Yukari Iwatani Kane and Nathan Layne report from Tokyo. ”You could almost characterize it as a partnership of two weaknesses,” said Nick Ingelbrecht, an Australia-based analyst for Gartner.

The JV is likely to be located in California and Japan and will make phones for the dominant 3G telecoms service in the U.S. and parts of Asia, Dan Sloan reports in video.

The mobile industry unveiled plans to bring instant messaging (IM) to cell phones later this year to tap a new source of revenues and build on the success of text messaging, Santosh Menon reports.

Fifteen of the world’s top mobile operators, including Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, Telefonica and China Mobile announced plans to roll out PC-type instant messaging services initially targeting some 700 million mobile users.

But the service will not be free, and mobile operators plan to charge clients using the familiar “calling party pays principle”, under which users pay for sending messages but not for receiving them.

Nokia launched three new phone models on Monday (N-92 pictured above), due in the second quarter, saying it hoped to sell “tens of millions” of its new slim 6131 camera phone, Tarmo Virki and Georgina Prodhan report from 3GSM.BenQ Mobile said it will bring the world’s first HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) mobile phone to market around the time of the soccer World Cup in Germany that starts in June. The EF91 can download video such as football clips much faster than the first generation of 3G phones.

Sony-Ericsson K 610 is presented during the 3GSM. REUTERS/Gustau Nacarino