Hardware, mobile phones and electronics companies, have made their debut in India’s largest consumer exhibition on mobility - Mobile Asia 2008- held at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, held from Feb 29- March 3, 2008. The event was formally inaugurated by the Hon’ble Delhi Chief Minister, Shiela Dikshit. The annual expo has always been a favourite destination for the who’s who of the telcos and handset manufacturers to exhibit latest & innovative telephony, technologies and services. 

Organised by the Indian Cellular Association (ICA), the four-day event featured the latest technological developments in the Indian mobile market with participation of several domestic and global mobile manufacturing companies.

Samsung Telecommunications has showcased a slew of new, stylish and featured packed range of mobile handsets at Mobile Asia 2008. While the new handset range has said to be target the consumers across the Multimedia (Imaging & Music), Business Lifesyle and Popular segments, the Company also showcased its Flagship ‘Soul’, ‘Serenata’ and ‘Armani’ models at the exhibition. Sunil Dutt, Country Head, Samsung Telecommunication India, said, “ We are using the Mobile Asia platform to launch a series of sleek and stylish Samsung mobile phones that exemplify cutting-edge technology and design innovation. The unique and clearly differentiated features of these phones makes the samsung 2008 mobile range the complete answer to consumer needs across different segmebts of the market.”

Sounding exuberant on the company’s participation, Shailendra Jha, Business Manager, Mobile Phones, commented, “When it comes to flying the flag for established players and brand visibility for emerging ones, these kind of events play a very important role. Intex is all set to make the best out of it. With an expected foot-fall of 4 lacs, we are looking forward to a valuable customer response, both in terms of feedback and sales.”

LG Electronics’ focus products in this event has believed to included the recently launched professional level camera phone LG Viewty (KU990), the interact-pad based KF600, the slim and stylish Design with interactive touch lighting phone KF510 and the much awaited smart phone KS20. At the Mobile Asia 2008, LG build on the momentum for touchscreen phones that it generated last year when it launched the Viewty-KU990.

Speaking on the interesting line-up for the year, Anil Arora, Business Group Head, GSM, LG Electronics India, said, “This year LG will tighten our focus on creating products based on insight from our customers. We give equal importance to advanced features, multimedia capabilities as well as ease of use. Our new phones are a reflection of our commitment towards the same. He further commented, “Our future line-up of GSM phones with “intuitive intelligence” based technology not only meet, but exceed our customers’ needs. The adaptability of touchscreens makes them a crucial element in creating more intuitive user interfaces. We see touchscreens as a growing trend in the mobile industry and are proud of our latest phones, which give us product leadership in this area.”

Nokia has also provided the consumers a first hand experience of its wide range of feature-packed products on the inaugural day of Mobile Asia 2008. Navigation, convergence, imaging, music and gaming are some of the features to be precise are seen flaunting their phones.

Devinder Kishore, Director of Marketing at Nokia, said, “Nokia is a clear leader in the mobile space, and now we are gearing up to take mobility to the next level by offering a range of internet services to its consumers. Events like the Mobile Asia provide the perfect platform to showcase the depth and range of services a company has to offer to the market.” Nokia has also displayed the N95, N73, N82, 5610, 5310 and the E90 communicator, addressing the complete convergence mobile phone market.

Sony Ericsson has unveiled the new XPERIA X1 at the Mobile Asia 2008. The XPERIA X1 is said to address the growing needs of consumers demand for mobile web communication and multimedia entertainment and also position the company at the forefront of mobile convergence.

Motorola had plenty to show off at their Mobile Asia 2008 booth. From their CDMA handsets, to the MOTOYUVA entry-level phones, and even a 24-carat gold plated MotoRAZR V8, LG had them all lined up. All that was visible at the GSMA World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, LG brought to New Delhi for their Indian customers to ogle at during the four-day Mobile Asia 2008. i-mate launches four new models of the i-Mate Ultimate series. These include the Ultimate 6150, 8150, 8502 and 9502. They were said to be made for the global traveler, being equipped to operate worldwide on Quad-Band GSM/EDGE Tri-Band UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA networks. These models comes with unique specifications like having a video/XGA out that can transfer video from the phone on to a plasma screen, and the fastest radio connection of any Windows Mobile device. Pankaj Mohindroo, Chairman of i-Mate India, said, „The much awaited launch of the Ultimate series in the Indian market is a huge milestone for i-mate that further solidifies our leadership position in this part of the world. Our new Ultimate product portfolio will range iconic devices designed to meet the growing demands of technology savvy and business customers and provide the best specification and form factor mix, with a device to match everyone’’s needs‰.

This year the exhibition’s focus was on GenNext. The event has displayed the applications and solutions at different stages of the value chain for convergent technologies from infrastructure to deployment. Eye-catching attractions were present all over the place to please the inquisitive visitors as the place offered so many options under one roof.