We’re live from the CTIA Enterprise and Apps show in sunny San Diego and this was poised to be one of the best fall show yet before a major handset announcement was postponed. Fear not, loyal reader, as the mobile conference will still be jam-packed with interesting news and apps, so let’s take a look at what to expect.
Carrier showdown
During the last CTIA keynote, the CEOs of AT&T, Verizon and Sprint were on stage discussing the mobile industry. It also happened that the AT&T, T-Mobile merger news broke the day before, so sh*t got wild. Sprint’s CEO Dan Hesse was ragging on AT&T and made the case for the mega-merger to not go through and there were a bunch of uncomfortable yet awesome moments.
Well, at CTIA 2011 San Diego, the CEOs of AT&T, Sprint and Verizon will be back on stage and you can be sure that things will get heated. All three carriers now carry the iPhone but the market will continue to be heated. You can expect Hesse to take more shots at AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega, AT&T making the case for the merger and Verizon CEO Dan Mead will probably play it cool on the sidelines with that excellent mustache of his.
Whatever fireworks happen, you can be sure we’ll be there with a live blog to keep you up to date.
Apps and more fun
The CTIA fall show is focused on the enterprise and apps, so we’re sure to see some cool stuff on the mobile software front. The great thing about events like this is that you never know who you’ll run into at the event, as the next Instagram or Angry Birds developer could be lurking. We’re also booked for a tour of the Nokia testing center, so look for a photo and video tour of what is commonly called the cell phone torture chamber.
San Diego is also the backyard of Qualcomm, so you know the dominant mobile chip maker will want to make an impression. We’re expecting to learn more about the Krait lineup, so that should be very exciting.
No Nexus Prime
The IntoMobile team was genuinely excited about the introduction of the Nexus Prime, which probably was going to be shown off by Samsung and Google Oct. 11 because we felt like this was the next great phone of the year now that the iPhone 4S has been outed. Unfortunately, Google and Samsung decided to postpone the event.
The rumored specs suggest the Nexus Prime will be made by Samsung, should pack a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor, will come with a massive screen that has 720p resolution and it will likely have a lot of RAM and a really nice camera. To be honest, if it was just a repackaged Galaxy SII LTE, I’d be pretty happy because that looks like a killer device. Other reports suggest this may be an exclusive to Verizon, which should mean that it will sport 4G LTE support.
The Nexus Prime isn’t only going to be some amazing hardware, it should be the showcase device for the next generation of Google’s Android software, Ice Cream Sandwich. We’ve heard a bit about this at the Google I/O conference earlier this year but there still remains many questions about what this software update will bring.
First of all, Ice Cream Sandwich is supposed to unify Android between phones and tablets by making it easier for developers to create apps for both. To the end user, the benefit is obvious: making app development easier should lead to better apps. We could also see a full-fledged version of the Chrome browser too, which will lead to a better mobile browsing experience.
Other than that, we really don’t know that much about the next version of Android or the Nexus device and it looks like we will have to wait a bit longer to find out.
The CTIA fun will continue all week, as we’ll be providing you great news, photos and videos of the mobile show. Follow along tomorrow morning around 9 a.m. PST for the CEO showdown and keep an eye on our Twitter and Facebook pages for a behind-the-scenes look at the show.