The CTIA’s annual U.S. wireless technology showcase in Las Vegas was quieter than usual this year as vendors sent fewer employees and rented less floor space for their booths in an effort to crimp spending due to the recession.

Aside from a lot of talk about cellphone applications and a software store launch from BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, the show offered few surprises.

A handful of operators and vendors, however, offered insights into their technology strategies — even if they were less than keen to indicate how their businesses were faring exactly. Some even launched new gadgets.
    
AT&T, the exclusive operator for the iPhone, used the show as an opportunity to talk up application sales for its less fancy phones, which have brought it $1 billion in revenue in the last few years. In comparison, it does not get a revenue share for iPhone apps, which kicked of the craze for application stores when they launched last year.

However, the carrier noted that its more traditional phones are a much bigger business than high-profile, advanced devices like iPhone.

“About 25 percent of our portfolio is smartphones. That means that 75 percent of them are not,” AT&T chief marketing officer David Christoper told reporters at a lunch on the sidelines of the show on Thursday.
    
AT&T, behind only Verizon in subscriber numbers, also talked about the need to offer new pricing options for mobile data in future. It is expected to be a year or more behind Verizon Wireless in upgrading its network to a high-speed technology known as “long term evolution”.

But when it does, likely in 2011, it expects to cut data access fees and stop charging for phone calls by the minute. Instead it may charge data access fees based on how much netwok capacity a customer uses up.

“It will be an environment where people buy the amount of data they need,” Ralph de la Vega, the head of AT&T’s mobility business, told reporters. “We’ll be able to sell them a lot more data than we do today for a lower price.”

Qualcomm investor relations executive Bill Davidson declined to comment on prospects for a general return for chip demand, but in an interview with Reuters, he said that the company is expecting big growth from markets such as China and India.

While China is often cited as the emerging market for wireless growth, Davidson said the expected award of licenses to build 3G high-speed networks in India, could bring even more growth.

“The Indian market is going to be a very good market for 3G, even more so than China, because its under-served on the wireline side,” Davidson said in an interview.

At its booth, Qualcomm showed a prototype consumer electronics charger called eZone, which could charge as many as five gadgets such as phones, cameras or music players simultaneously. The gadgets are placed in no particular order on a flat rectangular plate that is plugged into a power source.

Qualcomm said it is talking to different device manufacturers about incorporating the technology in their devices. If it brings the product to market it would likely have partner companies manufacture the device.

(Reuters Photo: Ralph de la Vega  at CTIA by David Becker)

The megawatt Irish rock band U2, which has had a relationship with Apple going back several years, surprised a few people on Monday when it announced the sponsor for its upcoming 360 Tour: Research in Motion.

Of course, Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s BlackBerry are fierce rivals in the emerging smartphone market. But U2 has a history with Apple, appearing in iPod commercials and performing at a blockbuster Apple event back in 2004. There was even a special-edition U2 iPod.

U2 manager Paul McGuinness had this to say about the band’s new relationship with RIM:

“This tour announcement marks the first stage of a relationship and shared vision between RIM and U2 that we expect will lead to new and innovative ways to enhance the mobile music experience on the BlackBerry platform for U2 fans. We look forward to sharing more details as the relationship unfolds.”

U2’s tour will kick off in Barcelona in June and visit 14 cities in Europe before landing in Chicago in September for the North American leg.

(Photo: Reuters)

Has Verizon Wireless already run out of BlackBerry Storm phones?

Buyers who didn’t get to Verizon stores in time on Friday, the first day of sales, were first told that they would get the touch-screen iPhone rival in about five to seven days.

But by Monday morning, Verizon’s website was only promising that orders would be shipped by mid December, citing “limited availability.” Dec. 15 was also the date cited by at least one midtown Manhattan store, which had run out early on Friday.

Does this signal overwhelming demand that took Verizon and Research In Motion by surprise, or some sort of problem? RIM referred questions about the delay to Verizon Wireless. Verizon Wireless was still not commenting by 4.45 PM Monday.

At least some analysts were convinced that the Storm had sold out.

Research Capital analyst Nick Agostino wrote in a research note that his checks on 30 direct and indirect Verizon retail outlets showed that the phone had sold out within an hour on Friday and that the company had sold 250,000 to 400,000 phones.

But with shipments not expected until mid-December, or even later, the analyst questioned whether there were manufacturing/distribution issues at RIM and worried if a delay would lead customers to rivals if they could not physically deliver the product prior to the holidays. That said the analyst acknowleded having no concrete indication this was the case.

“It is unclear if RIM/Verizon risks losing some of the significant pent-up demand in the crucial Thanksgiving shopping week,” RBC anlayst Mike Abramsky

(Graphic from Verizon Wireless website)

All eyes will be on Research In Motion on Friday when the BlackBerry Storm, the latest high-profile cell phone for the U.S. market, hits the streets. The CrackBerry maker’s much anticipated touch-screen offering is Verizon Wireless’ big bet for the holiday season this year.
But while Thursday’s reviews praised the device for its innovation and its advantages over iPhone, they by no means gave in to the hero-worship flattery that is bestowed on some devices.

In the words of Ed Baig of USA Today, “Verizon and Rim have not come up with a perfect Storm, but it does pack a wallop.”

    What he liked:
    -The battery “didn’t seem to poop out quite as fast as iPhone.”
    -It works as a tethered modem, has expandable memory, multimedia messaging, supports copy-and-paste and other features missing in the iPhone.
    -It has robust e-mail capability
    -It has backbutton and a video recorder unlike iPhone, and has a better camera

   What he disliked:
    - It does not have Wi-Fi - “a mistake”
    - It is harder to use, “less intuitive” than iPhone
    - Its Web navigation does not support the pinching gesture that lets you zoom in and out on iPhone. Tapping twice lets you zoom in on a part of a web page using Storm
    - Flicking through photos, scrolling a web page wasn’t as smooth as iPhone
    
    Walt Mossberg of Wall Street Journal called Storm “a very capable handheld computer that will appeal to BlackBerry users who have been pining for a touch-controlled device with a larger screen.” But Mossberg was lukewarm on what he called its biggest innovation - the fact that when you tap the touch screen you feel a click designed to remind you of pressing a real keyboard.

 What he liked::
    - It supports cut-and-paste and multimedia messaging, unlike iPhone
    - It has a better speaker than iPhone supporting crisp, clear calls
    - It runs on the Verizon Wireless network, which has a good reputation for reliability, and that it supports GSM as well as CDMA so it works overseas
    - It is “physically attractive” but in the same sentence said it is “hardly svelte” as it is 15 percent thicker and 17 percent heavier than iPhone.

What he disliked::
    - Its keypad is more more like iPhone’s keyboard than a traditional BlackBerry’s, despite RIM’s efforts to reassure BlackBerry addicts. He said they did not consider Storm typing similar to typing on a traditional keypad.
    - It doesn’t have Wi-Fi -”a glaring deficit.”
    - It presents a full QWERTY keyboard only when you hold the phone horizontally - “annoying, and that may put off others.”
    - RIM did not customize the keyboard for common tasks like iPhone which offers a convenient  “.com” key for when you’re typing an web address

New York Times tech commentator David Pogue did not have a review of Storm on Thursday.

(Photograph:From VerizonWireless)

Virgin Mobile USA is in talks to acquire Helio, the U.S. mobile arm of South Korea’s SK Telecom, to combine their struggling businesses, according to the Financial Times on Wednesday.

Though speculation about the talks had been knocked down by Bernstein Research analyst Walter Piecyk on Tuesday,  the companies seem serious about merging the two businesses, which focus on the youth end of the market.

Virgin Mobile, partly owned by British enterpreneur Sir Richard Branson and Sprint Nextel Corp, serves more than 5 million customers. Helio is 69 percent owned by SK, with US Internet provider EarthLink owning 28 percent.

While Virgin and Helio have struggled somewhat with businesses that rely on America’s youth, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion is going from strength to strength by focusing on the grown-ups.  As our analysis shows here, RIM is expected to post earnings and revenue at the high end of forecasts later on Wednesday.

Keep an eye on:

 * Publicis launched a strategic initiative called VivaKi to boost performance in the fast-growing digital advertising market (Reuters)

 * Charter delays plan for targeted web advertising (Reuters, WSJ)

* The world’s first advertising-funded mobile telecoms operator, Blyk, will enter the highly competitive German, Spanish and Belgian markets next year (Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters)