Best in show

Garret Johnston visited 117 stands at this year’s mobile world congress. Of those companies, only six were able to tell him in simple terms how their product or service could improve the consumer experience and thereby the MTS offering. With a little more digging, though, Johnston was able to unearth a total of 46 companies which had products that excited him.

Arantech

Customer experience management outfit that counts four of the six largest operators among its customer base.

Aricent

Systems integrator and consultancy firm that counts leading operators and vendors among its clients. Describes itself as a “fundamentally new breed of strategic supplier” focussed on “co-creation” with its customers.

www.aricent.com

Audience

Mountain View-based voice processing outfit that specialises in noise suppression and echo cancelling for what remains by far the most popular application on mobile; voice calling. Founder member of the Open Handset Alliance.

www.audience.com

AudioBoo

Mobile audio blogging tool from London-based company that enables users to add photos and location tags to audio posts. “We believe that spoken word audio has been left behind in the current explosion of online innovation,” the company says.

audioboo.fm

Beyo

Innovative German startup that has developed an application which can capture text using a camera phone and convert it to synthesised speech. Targeted at the visually impaired but the solution could have alternative uses if combined with translation software.

www.beyocbs.com/en/

Buscom

Finnish developer of transport system management software that is branching into mobile ticketing.

www.buscom.fi

CardioNet

US mobile medicine specialist that has developed a Mobile Cardiac Outpatient Telemetry solution. CardioNet monitors patient’s heart, beat by beat, for up to 21 days, detecting, recording and transmitting all data automatically to patient’s doctor.

www.cardionet.com

Celcom, Secret SMS

An encrypted SMS service from Malaysian carrier Celcom that enables the user to make certain SMS messages password protected.

www.celcom.com.my/cep/consumer/mobile-addons/essentials/secret-sms.html

Cellfire

Mobile coupon player, well established in US market, that connects brands and merchants with end users through the provision of discount coupons delivered to the mobile handset. The firm has issued more than eight million coupons since launch in 2005.

www.cellfire.com

Celltick

Mobile marketing specialist that focuses on the idle screen time on mobile phones. The firm uses cell broadcast technology to send marketing content to handsets as a managed service. Has agreements in place with more than 40 carriers and claims 60 million transactions each month.

www.celltick.com

Coda System

French start-up that enables audio visual files captured on smartphones to be timestamped, georeferenced, indexed and archived. The firm says photo, video or audio content stored in its system has legal value as a result of the verification processes it carries out. Content can then be used as “evidence of who did what, when and where,” according to the firm’s website.

www.codasystem.com/

Dial2do

Voice control application developer based in Dublin, Ireland with software that allows users to execute multiple mobile tasks handsfree. Targeted at drivers, the solution can convert text messages and emails to audio, as well as convert spoken messages back to text for distribution as email and SMS. Calendar management, Twitter and news feeds also covered. Privately funded, Dial2do was spun out of Rococo Software.

www.dial2do.com

Einstein Wireless, Emergency Cell Broadcast

Wisconsin-based operator Einstein Wireless offers a cell broadcast service to alert its customers to natural disasters, terrorist attacks and other large scale disasters.

www.einsteinpcs.com

Else Mobile

The Israeli outfit formerly known as Emblaze, Else has designed and built a Linux-based smartphone from scratch. The OS is Limo-compliant and developed in conjunction with Access. Else claims a revolutionary application-centric user interface and the firm has a website that owes more than a nod to The Matrix. The phone itself is in the final stages of development.

else.bz

Evolving Systems

OSS provider headquartered in Colorado that specialises in number portability, number management and dynamic SIM allocation.

www.evolving.com

Ezetop

Irish startup that’s brought together prepaid top up and remittances with a solution that lets users top up the mobile accounts of friends and family from wherever they are in the world. Currently has relationships with 95 mobile operators.

www.ezetop.com

FlexiSPY

We can’t tell you much about this one because our corporate firewall judges the site to be “questionable” and won’t grant us access. But it seems to be a service that lets users spy on other handsets, predominantly to catch cheating spouses.

www.flexispy.com

FonYou Telecom

Spanish MVNO now taking its central concept to other operators as a white label service. Cloud based services that the firm says will enable carriers to significantly improve their relevance to the customer include deep online account management and call recording that CEO Fernando Núñez Mendoza says will ensure operators can compete with the likes of Google Voice, Ribbit and Skype.

www.fonyoutelecom.com

Jasper Wireless

End to end M2M specialist that looks to help operators build an M2M business. Works with carriers from the start of the sales cycle through the deployment of its Acquisition Engine and promises developer programme as well as access to existing M2M customers that have already standardised on the Jasper platform.

www.jasperwireless.com

Layar

Augmented reality browser from Dutch firm SPRXmobile, which claims the product is a world first. Launched in June 2009 Layar was designed initially for Android handsets. A first attempt at an iPhone version was pulled from Apple’s App Store but an improved follow up is now available. A deal was recently signed with Samsung that sees the Layar application pre-installed on the Korean firm’s Galaxy S Android handset.

layar.com

Lifewatcher

Patient monitoring solution from Japanese player Mobile Healthcare. Application enables patients to keep a firmer grasp on key health metrics such as blood sugar, blood pressure and calorie intake while relaying information to primary health care providers.

www.lifewatcher.com

Mobiqa

Mobile ticketing specialist that has run a number of programmes with the likes of Vodafone and O2.

www.mobiqa.com

MobiSiteGalore

US outfit that allows anyone with content to publish to build a mobile website that will then be hosted by the firm. It promises consistency of performance across all mobile internet-enabled handsets.

www.mobisitegalore.com

Percent Mobile

US analytics firm that allows fixed and mobile internet website owners to track traffic to their sites.

percentmobile.com

Phonak

Manufacturers what it claims is the world’s smallest hearing aid with full wireless connectivity built in. Its products can connect to mobile phones, televisions, PCs and digital media players.

www.phonak.com

Red Salvavidas

Natural disaster information service.

redsalvavidas.org

ScanBuy

US mobile barcode specialist that enables camera phones to become scanners. Barcodes can trigger calls, video or web links. The firm’s application is preloaded by a number of leading handset vendors and supports all major smartphone platforms.

www.scanbuy.com

Sendflow

Cloud-based platform that enables the creation of enterprise-grade interactive SMS and Voice applications without the need for any coding.

sendflow.com

TextPayMe

Amazon-backed SMS payment service in the US that allows users to transfer funds from person to person using text messages.

www.textpayme.com/

TransferTo

Another firm focused on prepay top-up as a form of international remittance, TransferTo is headquartered in Singapore.

www.transfer-to.com

Ubidyne

Aspiring German infrastructure vendor that has integrated base station technology into its antenna products, reducing the equipment requirements of antenna sites. Picked up an innovation award at this year’s MWC and has a trial ongoing with Vodafone.

www.ubidyne.com

Visionect

Slovenian start-up concerned with power management in mobile devices. Focused on ‘extreme energy economisation’ the firm says its wireless devices can run for six months between charges.

www.visionect.si

Voicetap

Indian startup that aims to function as a spoken version of AQA, the UK question answering service. The difference is that the respondents aren’t paid employees but members of the public or corporate sponsors. Users can rate the quality of the ‘experts’ responses. “To put it simply, Voicetap aims to solve all your queries by connecting you to the best available expert who can answer your queries,” say the firm’s founders.

www.voicetap.in

Vuzix iWear CamAR

Vuzix manufactures video eyewear and personal display devices for the mobile video, entertainment, defence and commercial markets. Consumer products, worn like normal glasses, give an equivalent viewing experience to screens ranging from 44 to 67 inches when viewed from a distance of ten feet, according to Vuzix. The iWear CamAR solution couples a USB camera with the video eyewear products allowing the user to view the real world together with computer generated graphics.

www.vuzix.com/iwear/products_camar.html