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In a sort of American Idol for the mobile technology world, the GSM Association held its American leg of the 2009 Mobile Innovation Global Award Competition in Atlanta on June 3-4. This was a cool event bringing together top innovators in the mobile market space, and I enjoyed the chance to see so many new technologies on one stage. Competitors each had eight minutes to give an “elevator pitch” about their products to a panel of judges representing leading mobile operators and venture capitalists. The finalists go on to compete against winners from other regions for the title of the 2009 GSMA Mobile Innovation Global Award Champion, who is to be named during the GSMA Mobile World Congress next February in Barcelona.

FINALISTS FROM THE AMERICAS An Israeli company, modu Ltd., will put the world’s lightest phone up for the grand prize. The compact phone is complemented by a system of “jackets,” which change the appearance and function of the phone for various applications or just for a different. The modu phone can also be paired with other consumer electronics devices such as a portable stereo to provide personalized content and functions. The company is working to “build the ultra-personal experience” and is partnering with other companies to produce jackets for fun and fashion that will sell in the $30 to $50 range. That pricing allows the user to have multiple mobile devices without reinvesting in the phone, processor and memory portion for each one.

Ubidyne, a German company founded by Siemens, has produced base station antennas with embedded digital-micro-radio components inside the active antennae array. This scalable design can use a wide range of macro and micro antennas, and offers two-to five-times reliability improvement and 4 db improvement in performance. This is a truly innovative design in that it offers greater performance and at the same time brings the environmental benefits of a smaller footprint, cleaner installation and reduced energy consumption.

GLOBAL SEMI-FINALISTS
For the “Most Innovative Wireless Device-Centric Technology,” CooTek of China was recognized for its TouchPal soft keyboard which combines innovative touch/gesture recognition with context-based prediction algorithms that anticipate and correct words “even if you mistype every letter.” Flexible layouts allow the user to use a finger to “sweep” between keyboards rather than to navigate through selection menus.

For the “Most Innovative Mobile Application in a Vertical Market”, Tagattitude of France was chosen for its Near Sound Data Transfer technology. The technology uses sound pattern recognition for electronic transactions on cell phones, allowing secure mobile commerce without modification to the billions of existing phones already in the market. The technology is targeted for e-commerce authentication in the developed world and for mobile payments in the developing world, including person-to-person (P2P), mobile-to-ATM and remote-payment transactions. Tagattitude is also working with NCR to allow transactions between phones and the existing ATM infrastructure, again without modification of the current hardware setup.

For the “Most Innovative Consumer Application or Service,” U.S.-based Sharpcast, Inc. was recognized for its SugarSync application that allows push synchronization of personal media across mobile and home devices. Emulating the Blackberry e-mail synchronization as a model, SugarSync allows content such as music and photos that is downloaded remotely to be backed up and synched to a PC via Sharpcast servers. Future versions will allow management of home Network Attached Storage as well.

There were many more great new applications and technologies presented at the Mobile Innovation Global Award competition. Linguatec, Inc. allows the phone to be used to “shoot and translate.” The user takes a picture of a foreign word or phrase, presses a “translate” button and gets both text and text-to-speech translation. The system uses the mobile Internet to run the image through three OCR engines, then through language translation software to convert from text to speech, all within about 30 seconds, according to Linguatec.

MMCast, an interactive video advertising solution, preloads ads based on user profile. The user then plays ads during formerly dead “download” time when waiting for requested content. The system provides smarter bandwidth use and allows the user to see targeted ads and to get the ad message out of the way while requested content is downloading in the background.

Red Bend Software, Inc. specializes in over-the-air updates for phones, managing the process for any software on any phone. With the handset software market growing exponentially, this focus on optimizing the speed and reliability of firmware updates, software components and device management makes sense.

WiSpry, Inc.’s software programmable radios combine antennae and power amp into a single tunable element. The MEMS chips are manufactured in standard RF CMOS process and allow 1.5-dB to 3-dB improvement on the front end. WiSpry says the technology improves time to market by allowing radio tuning within a matter of hours.

GestureTek uses the cell-phone camera for motion detection and gesture recognition, bringing a host of new applications to the cell phone. Check out the video we shot back at CTIA.

REACHING OUT
The Mobile Innovations conference also looked at the impact that cell phones are having on emerging markets. Where 55% of the world previously had no access to communications cell phones are bringing mobile money transfer to the “unbanked” and allowing micro financing opportunities to extend out of the cities and into the rural countryside. Safaricom Ltd.’s mPesa service is reaching 10.8 million subscribers in Kenya, bringing them access to financial services that can change lives. CellBazaar is a Bangladeshi company that has built up an eBay-like trading system using SMS messaging to fill the needs of the local market. For example, Bangladeshi fisherman can sell fish via the network and insure they get a fair price. Another company, SourceTrace Systems, Inc. is using the cellular infrastructure to promote transactional services for the rural communities with applications for agricultural commodity trading and tracking.

Indeed, bringing cellular communications to remote areas can have a life-changing effect. For another example, check out Engineering TV’s education channel report on UC Berkeley’s work to use the cellular phone infrastructure to bring medical imaging to remote locations here.