The INQUIRER goes to Mobile World Congress

NO MANANA for the people of Barcelona come Monday when Mobile World Congress 2011 kicks off, as the industry players descend into the sunny Spanish city to show off their devices and discuss their plans and products for the future.

By then we should have stopped laughing at the apparent suicide pact that is the Nokia and Microsoft announcement that they will partner on developing smartphones running the Vole's Windows Phone OS. Perhaps we'll hear more about Nokia's plan to put out a Windows tablet that was hinted at today.

So the keynotes from Nokia CEO Stephen Elop and Microsoft's Steve Ballmer will be of particular interest. Other executives from Qualcomm, Intel, Research in Motion, Yahoo and Cisco as well as Twitter's new CEO Dick Costolo will all be giving us their visions and strategies and badly read speeches.

Avoiding all that hot air in the cooler exhibition halls, we can expect a slew of product announcements coming our way from the likes of HTC, Samsung, ViewSonic, LG and ZTE. And you'll find it all, both news and video, tipping up here at The INQUIRER, www.theinquirer.net. µ