June 21st, 2006

CommunicAsia Day 1

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I was down with a flu yesterday so only managed to get to CommunicAsia 2006 this afternoon. I was told there are a lot more exhibitors this year but I “feel” there is less crowd compared to the last year.

Yesterday, Minister Dr. Lee Boon Yang unveil the iN2015 IT masterplan so I went to the IDA booth to chat with some old friends and got a copy of the nicely printed plan. Since I was in IDA when this was cooked, and that it probably change a lot in the last couple of months, I shall reserve my comments about the masterplan. But I would love to hear what you think.

I only have a little time to look around the Wibro products catch my attention. Beside the standard CPE in the form of wireless modem or PCMCIA card,

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there is also this prototype wibro handheld game device and PDA

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wibro07.JPGBut what is cool is this dual mode CDMA/WiBro handphone from Samsung.

This is really surprising because I got mixed message from Samsung about Wibro. On one hand, the marketing folks are promoting Wibro like it is next wireless revolution that will take over the world, the message I got from the product folks however is that they arent really ready to talk about Wibro as all their products are tied in Korea deployment.

I remember in Hong Kong, one of the speaker say that if you can wait, Wimax 802.16e will have mobility products in 6 months but if you want mobility now, Wibro is here. Even if the latter is true, I doubt 6 months window is worth being tied down to a propiertary technology. Wait for Wibro to harmonized with Wimax.Incidently, last year I took a picture of imode growth? This year, they update the chart :-)

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