A few of us from Plaxo made the trip to CTIA Wireless 2006 ® in Las Vegas last week. We joined 40,000 other attendees from over 90 countries in oohing and aahing over the latest wireless phones, services, and applications that will be available in America over the next 3-4 months. (Some of our team also got to go to the granddaddy wireless show in Europe, 3GSM, a couple of months ago.) At CTIA, there were over 900 exhibitors and we didn’t even come close to seeing them all.
The phone manufacturers’ booths (Motorola, Nokia, LG, Samsung to name a few) were packed with new phones and people wanting to see them. There were phones that reminded me of kids’ transformers – depending on which way you opened them up, it could be a phone, camera or video camera. Phones showing live tv whose screens turned vertically or horizontally depending on how you preferred to watch the show – with no interruption as you turned the screen! Phones with Zeiss optics for the cameras, the first 10Mpixel camera in a phone, a phone with a Flash-based UI, high quality music players and streaming video on others, a phone with a built-in 4GB harddrive or of removable memory (you can store a lot of music and images in 4GB!), phones with wifi, phones running linux, more phones with push-to-talk and bluetooth…phones for kids, phones for seniors, … Now all I need is a phone to do my laundry. If you need more details on the new phones at CTIA, visit the experts at www.PhoneScoop.com.
Now that phones can deliver and display rich media, the phone is a platform for entertainment and personalization - attracting companies such as MTV, Disney, ESPN, HBO, AOL, as well as game developers to the show. We talked to application vendors about surround sound (yes, on the phone!), location-based technology (maps and directions), haptic technology (the phone rumbles as you play a game), cartoons and games, ringtones and mp3 players, streaming video and live tv, controlling your tivo from your phone, and speech recognition.
Also fun was the wireless fashion show which had young designers competing for the top prize in innovation with wireless technology – everything from a baseball jacket with an led billboard which scrolled “CTIA Wireless” (image the lights of Vegas on legs), a purse used as a signaling device (to catch a cab, let the waiter know you’re ready to order or catch the attention of your SO) to clothing which emitted aromatherapy if it sensed the wearer was stressed.
CTIA announced that 25.7 million new wireless subscribers were added in America in calendar 2005 bringing the total number of estimated wireless customers in the US to 207.9 million. Wow. That’s a lot of you trying to make calls, send SMS, share photos and ringtones, and send emails from the phone. So we’re thinking, what can Plaxo do to help you out? If you’ve got a mobile phone and you’re a Plaxo member, we’d love to hear what you want from Plaxo while you’re on the go. Let us know on the Plaxo Community Forums or by commenting on this post!
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I agree with the previous comment that wireless over-the-air synchronization should be priority #1. I too would be willing to pay for that. Plaxo's current business model doesn't make any sense to me. You give away the stuff that's interesting (synchronization across devices) and charge for the stuff that isn't (sorry, e-cards aren't high on my list of must-haves..).
Thanks for the feedback Olly and Ian. Glad to hear you are interested in OTA sync. It's bubbling up in priority because members like you let us know what you want. Calendar, tasks and notes will be added to the API this year. We've also noticed interest in an "erase my phone address book" feature in the event a phone is lost or stolen.
Ian, were you interested in a particular client (Symbian, J2ME, BREW, SyncML, Windows Mobile,...)?
If you think of more features you'd like to have, let us know!
Kathy
I would love to see task syncing, calendars syncing as well. A client that can be installed on my phone that displays the information in a standard way without relying on my phone's calendar and task list, thye leave much to be desired. I have a Windows Mobile 2003 smartphone.
I prefer HP communicators. I don't need anything else.
A calendar that could sync with my phone would be priceless, but it should be well understood that many, many phones use different or slightly different platforms and technologies that might make client integration a real hassle.
I know that, if there were a Plaxo Mobile, my phone (Motorolla v188) probably wouldn't work with it.
However, what I would *love* to see is something similar to what Facebook.com offers for college students-- Register your phone number with the site, and when you're on the go, text "cell John Smith" to their number, and get a response of all John Smiths in your network instantly, with all listed phone numbers. That kind of feature isn't far off at all for Plaxo at the moment (in my opinion, based on the maturity of the service) and would be nearly universally compatible.
Hi Kathy
I have WebIS client to sync with Plaxo but it is quite slow. I checked with webIS and they did not have a very good answer.
Is there anyway Plaxo can help.
I also would love to have a sync to Plaxo utility for Symbian phones as I use that as personal phone.
Any news on that ?
Just bought a new phone with windows mobile on it and I REALLY need plaxo on it. This phone is great. The maker is www.htc.com from Taiwan. Plaxo. You should not be leaving this develoment to anyone else. YOU should be doing this.
I'm in Tokyo and the number of people I show this phone to and they run to the nearest store and change is surprising.
Please hurry up and get a Windows Mobile 5.x and 6.x version out for Outlook Mobile. I'd pay up to USD40 for it.
Cheers
Peter
First and foremost I would think wireless over-the-air syncing of your data would be the most important thing. I know WebIs do their Plaxo client but unfortunately it only works with Windows Mobile / PPC. A native symbian client to cater to the millions of Nokia / Sony Ericsson etc. users (not being a techy I am guessing, but perhaps a J2ME solution app is the best option for cross-platform compatibility?)
I have an SE P910. At the moment I use the dreaded Mightyphone which is the best solution in a market with no (AFAIK) competition. I would gladly switch to a native Plaxo solution for syncing to avoid all the duplicates and random deletions that Mightyphone causes. I would pay for it as well! ;) Plaxo's WAP access is a nice hack but this could be so much better. Obviously once the Open API improves, adding Task, Notes and Calendar syncing would be the next logical step, but for now I would settle for Contacts syncing.
Another cool feature would be adding the ability to erase your phone if you lose it. Imagine you lose your phone and all your valuable data is in the hands of somebody else. You log into the Plaxo site and click a button saying that you have lost your phone. When the Plaxo client next connects to the web it then receives a message from Plaxos server to begin deleting data. Once all data is removed it alerts the server that all phone is erased. It would give people peace of mind knowing their valuable data is now not in the hands of whover finds their phone.