Live from Samsung Mobile's MWC 2009 press conference
By Paul Miller 
posted Feb 16th 2009 6:09AM
posted Feb 16th 2009 6:09AM
6:44AM That's it! We'll be working on hands-on with Samsung's new kit in the coming hours.
6:41AM Not much being revealed here... Blue Earth will have eco-friendly packaging, and will be available in the second half of the year, running Samsung OS.
6:32AM Woah, that's it! Time for Q&A.
6:31AM Introducing Blue Earth, a solar-powered touchscreen phone.
6:30AM "The best value-added solutions." Yeah yeah. Here comes the eco-speak... "The Blue Earth Dream." "You may ask, why is it blue, not green? Let me explain. From outerspace, the Earth looks like blue marble." "Blue is the new green."
6:28AM Samsung grew 35% in emerging markets, while overall market grew 18%. "So, what is Samsung's potential? How can we continue to achieve leadership in both products and markets?" "First..." there seems to be something wrong with the teleprompter. They rush him his notes! Here we go. "First, I can say, Samsung is the only company that can provide newest and fastest convergence." We're not sure what that means, but it sounds pretty corporate-speak to us.
6:25AM However: "one product does not fit all." A variety of mobile OS, "Samsung has Symbian, Windows Mobile, and will introduce an Android phone this year."
6:24AM "How can we achieve our goal? Through product leadership." We like where they're heading with this. Back to talk about touch, they see the market growing and see the products as great for photography, video, music, GPS and games.
6:22AM Here comes the requisite global downturn preface. "I'm confident to predict, however, that Samsung Mobile will grow again this year, just as we were the fastest growing mobile company in 2008."
6:21AM Introducing JK Shin, head of Mobile Communications Division.
6:21AM "Why touch? Bigger screen, better multimedia, more customization."
6:20AM New strategy for 2009: "A Mobile to touch every lifestyle."
6:18AM Here's the Beat DJ and Beat Disc. IT JUST GOT LOUDER UP IN HERE. Advanced 'Usability' -- their unnecessary quotations, not ours. Interface seems decently slick, showing off an odd "disc UI," some pretty gimmicky DJ features like a fake scratching interface. The music buying interface looks very barebones.
6:15AM Omnia HD's turn, looks like they got the A team for this. Looking pretty slick. Talking up functions like TV, 8 megapixel camera, "gridview interface" for photos... and calling!
6:14AM New video, this one is about Ultra Touch. We're not sure who does Samsung's videos, but they almost rival Microsoft for awful.
6:12AM We've kicked things off with an incredibly painful scripted video of "real live people" expressing their love for phones and "touch."
Samsung has a tough act to follow, with the HTC touch diamond 2 and pro2. Hope they have some surprised in store
*Surprises
Stupid iPhone keyboard
Samsung is actually speaking about their Android phone, unlike HTC, so they already win. #@C* WinMo -- no hardware maker can fix such a failure of an OS.
You must be joking. HTC sucks.
It's gonna be all about the Omnia HD IMO. Good to see Symbian in full force this year the MWC.
WTF?
yes.. well it's too bad the photo of this solar phone... won't LOAD... :(
So, do we know what operating system this thing is running?
Been scanning the internets but have been unable to find anything on this...
well, that was...interesting. There was really nothing in that press conference that we didn't get from posters plastered over Barcelona. The announcements also seemed unusually vague for a major event, an android phone is coming at some point this year, the blue eco-phone will look really cool we promise, etc. Not the best way to kick of MWC in what should be a year of recovery for the mobile phone industry.
I don't know if I'm the only one who noticed this, but this written (or typed) press conference is the shortest one among all the other press conferences.