AT&T says it sees a lot of promise for the netbook and the connection fees that come with the devices as a growing source of revenue as consumers look to take broadband connectivity on the road. But will consumers be as enthusiatic to sign another contract for the service? Click below to hear AT&T’s President of Mobile & Consumer Markets talk about what he sees as the future of the netbook.

AT&T: Netbook popularity on the rise from Reuters TV on Vimeo.

Williams did credit Apple with one thing — a knack for design:  ”They pioneered new ground by taking this beautiful display size and doing a display-only product. That was pioneering”.  Symbian software is used in about two-thirds of all smartphones but of course not in the hugely popular Apple iPhone.

                                                                                                                        Apple introduces iPhone

                                                                                                                        3.0 OS software 

                                                                                                                        development kit in 

                                                                                                                        March 2009 

For Steve Jobs, the right price was just a matter of timing.

During an interview at the Reuters technology summit, the chief executive of flash memory maker SanDisk recalled an encounter years ago with the Apple chief executive, who was then working on a secret, exotic new MP3 player. It was to be called the iPod.

“We were already in music players,” said Eli Harari. “Steve wanted a one gigabyte flash memory for $100 in the year 2000, because he could get for $100 a 1.8 inch drive from Toshiba and he preferred flash.”
Jobs liked flash because it was smaller, faster and consumed less power than a disk drive — all vital for a better iPod.

“He was really a very, very early adapter for flash,” said Harari. In the end, they couldn’t do the deal because flash cost too much to produce. At least back then, anyway.

“We could not sell one gigabyte for $100,” Harari said. Recalling the price crashes of late 2008, Harari added wistfully: “In the fourth quarter it was 90 cents for one gigabyte.”

A few years after 2000, Jobs got his flash memory from Samsung at a bargain price, Harari said.  After that, flash memory became far more common in MP3 players.

“That’s what started it,”  Harari said.

Tech managers are not just savvy about new technology but also own the coolest, most cutting edge gadgets, right? Think again, some of them have no use for gadgets at all, finding pleasure instead in century old paintings and (gasp) pen and paper.

Alain Dutheil heads the world’s second largest mobile chipmaker, ST-Ericsson, but told Reuters Technology Summit he is not a big fan of the gadgets that run on his company’s chips.

“I am not a gadget man. I prefer paintings,” Dutheil said. He is particularly fond of late 19^th and early 20^th century masters from his home region Provence, which he collects.

Warren East, who runs leading chip designer ARM, admits he too has little use for gadgets. “I am a pen and paper kind of man. I can’t live without my fountain pen, it goes everywhere.” He does own a BlackBerry but says it’s just a “work tool” for him.

KPN’s Stan Miller, responsible for the Dutch company’s international mobile business, has only one thing to say when asked what his favourite device is or which gadget he cannot live without: “I don’t do gadgets.”

Alain Dutheil, CEO of  mobile chipmaker  ST-Ericsson,  is not a man easily deterred when he wants to get somewhere.

“My plane was late and when I arrived there was no car there to take me into town as planned.” So what did the 64-year-old do?

“I took a motorcycle, it was the only way I could make it to the Reuters Summit on time.”

Dutheil, who could retire next year, said the ride took him 25 minutes from Orly during morning rush hour in Paris for 55 euros, just around 15 euros more than a regular cab fare.

“Of course, I didn’t ride the bike myself,” he added.

In the midst of this recession, technology companies are drawing attention from investors and consumers alike as everyone tries to predict when the downturn will hit bottom and what new inventions might drive a recovery. How will new software and the Internet affect the way people do business? Can consumers afford to update the entertainment they enjoy in their house or car? Are workers properly equipped to communicate with clients and colleagues around the world? Which technology companies will come out as winners from this global crisis, and who will not make it?

Leading CEOs and senior executives will discuss their strategies and other topics at a time of increased uncertainty, sinking consumer demand and more controlled financing. The annual Reuters Global Technology Summit will generate exclusive interviews and articles, blog postings and online videos.

Here’s McAfee CEO Dave DeWalt talking about demand for computer security products in the economic downturn:

  Fixed-line phone provider Telefonos de Mexico was an old, rusty government-run mammoth when businessman Carlos Slim bought it two decades ago. In a matter of a few years, and with the help of billions of dollars to deploy a nation-wide, state-of-the-art network, Telmex became Slim’s cash cow.
    But times change fast. The expansion of cell phone services across Latin America, led by sister company America Movil, has dented Telmex’s domestic revenue in recent years. The arrival of new technologies, which allow international calls at very low prices, hit Telmex’s long-distance sales too.
    And let’s not forget the new players in the market.
    The company bets Internet services will help it keep business charging ahead. Chief Financial Officer Adolfo Cerezo told the Reuters Latin American Investment Summit that in five years Telmex could become a mostly-web focused company. 
    The one thing holding back even faster growth is that only a quarter of Mexican families own a computer.

 With presence in all key Latin American markets, a comfortable debt payment schedule for the next 10 years, and an undisputed lead in the region, what’s left for America Movil to do? The Mexican cellphone provider, part of the empire of billionaire and Forbes list fixture Carlos Slim, will focus on growing its 3G services in the 18 countries where it operates.
    Chief Financial Officer Carlos Garcia-Moreno spoke with Reuters during the Latin American Investment Summit in Mexico City, where he forecast that data traffic could make 25 percent of the company’s overall revenue within three years. 
    He bets that the arrival of new, cheaper cellphones with catchy web-surfing features will help the company’s data traffic rise. The company is also planning to sell netbooks across the continent to help lift its 3G income.

“Well insulated” China, though suffering from sharp drops in its own equities markets, doesn’t have the sense of crisis that exists in the U.S., says Philip Partnow, managing director of UBS Securities Ltd in Beijing. UBS, the first Western bank to assume management control of a domestic mainland brokerage, points out the fact that what’s hitting companies is not subprime-related securities gone bad.

“I think there’s nothing here we feel is toxid,” he told Reuters on Wednesday at the Reuters China Summit in Beijing. He goes on:

“The Chinese capital market has responded quite differently than global capital markets and that is because the Chinese capital markets are still pretty well insulated by the way China controls the RMB and by the other financial controls that China has.

“It is true that both the Shanghai A-share market and the Heng Seng market have fallen quite steeply, but that is more in response to a correction from what many people believe was an over-inflated stock bubble, rather than a direct response from some financial crisis or concern. That’s been then followed on by some concerns that people have about a weakening economic sentiment in the U.S. and Europe and Japan, which are China’s key export markets, and what the knock-in impact will be in China. So there is also a fundamental concern.”

“But there is not a sense of distress or of crisis, or that things that people thought were valuable suddenly vanishing into thin air, along the same lines of what we’ve seen with some of the things that were happening with Subprime and the complex structures that were set up around the subprime, back in the United States. So I think there’s nothing really that we feel that is toxic, out here in China, so we are broadly comfortable with the businesses that we’re in. “

By Lucy Hornby

As Russia’s acquisitive corporations have consolidated their positions at home, their ambitions have spread to other fast growing, often risky and untried emerging markets. First they hit the countries of the former Soviet Union, which many Russian businessmen still view as their backyard,  and more recently, have expanded in other emerging markets in Asia and Africa. Particularly hospitable have been the old Cold War allies of the Soviet Union, as Russian mobile phone operator Vimpelcom found when it made its first step in Asia by entering a joint venture in Vietnam.

“It was the real red carpet treatment,” Vimpelcom chief executive Alexander Izosimov said.  

 As part of its Cold War era hearts-and-minds campaign, Moscow welcomed thousands of foreign students who learned engineering, medicine, and at the same time, Russian language and culture.  The students of decades past now regularly meet Russian businessmen on their home turf.