Can you believe that it’s already time for the Spring CTIA show? CES and Mobile World Congress have already passed and now it’s time for the mobile world to focus on CTIA, which is generally a big time for U.S. carrier announcements. This year’s conference is taking place in New Orleans, so you know it’s going to be a good time.
Normally, we have a lot of leaks and anticipation leading up to CTIA but this year’s relatively quiet. The Galaxy S III introduction means there will be one less news item at the show but you can be sure that there will be a few major announcements.
LTE takes the stage
The top five U.S. carriers either have 4G LTE or have laid out plans to roll out this next-generation mobile broadband network and we expect the mobile operators to do a lot of crowing about this. AT&T and Verizon will likely argue about who has the largest “4G” network and Sprint has a “Network Vision” announcement planned which will likely shed light on its LTE rollout. T-Mobile will also reiterate its plans to catch up to its larger competitors.
On the afternoon of Tuesday, May 8, the CEOs of the four major carriers will be taking the stage in a keynote called,” Beyond LTE – Carrier Innovations.” What’s on tap? I’m not quite sure but we do know that AT&T and Verizon have opened up “innovation centers” and perhaps we’ll hear some more about how these are bearing fruit.
New devices
CTIA Spring is also a time when we get to see some new hardware but the rumor mill is relatively quiet this go-round. We are certain that HTC will have a new handset and it’s looking like it should be the Droid Incredible 4G on Verizon. It would also be nice of Sprint to have some new devices to announce to go along with its larger LTE network.
We know that the Samsung Galaxy S III will be coming to the United States this summer and I’m thinking that this could be good time to show off the versions that we can expect. Remember, the last Galaxy devices were tweaked for each carrier slightly, so don’t think we know the whole story about the latest Samsung device. Regardless, Samsung will likely have some other handsets to show off.
That’s about it for the rumor mill but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a new Motorola device released and ZTE will probably continue its assault on the U.S. market.
The wildcards
When Bourbon Street is involved, you don’t know what to expect. Former President Bill Clinton will be speaking on Thursday May 10 and it’s unclear what he will say. CTIA is also a time when many innovative app makers come out to play, so we’ll be keeping an eye on that.
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