Friday 18 February 2011

Mobile World Congress Barcelona: The Mobile World Playground

Our intrepid reporter (and Tesco.com Mobile Product Manager) Rebecca Pate concludes her visit to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona with this despatch, ending with a message for Android users:



The second day spent at MWC started with the developer event with HP introducing webOS, there's some really cool UI stuff going on here, like 'Just type' and coupling of browser screens. After a stop-off at the Blackberry stand to experiment with the Playbook and the HTC stand to check out the new HTC Flyer; the Android 'park' was next on the list. It couldn't have got more exciting with Doughnut, Gingerbread and Honeycomb smoothies coupled with a giant Android slide, yes you heard me and there is photographic evidence to prove it.


The number of tablet devices here at MWC is striking, almost every stand has got one on (it's hard to differentiate between all of them too!). What's interesting is that HTML5 is the common factor to all of them, indicating that this is the future platform for apps, both web and mobile. It opens an interesting debate here at Tesco for what we deliver to our customers and their expectations over the coming months.

The third and last morning was spent roaming around the conference hunting for variations of the collectable Android pins of which there are 86 in total, they were located (or sometimes hidden) at the stands of companies that are using Android in some form. It was serious business mind, with the more "duller" kind being traded and swamped for those more unique in the collection; I managed a grand total of 20 which wasn't too bad for a couple of hours work...

I arrived at the airport still seeing mini Androids (see photo above) so I think their clever marketing paid off.


As for our Android customers reading, we have something just around the corner for you!

7 comments:

  1. Android is around the corner for reals? How fast are we moving towards that corner? Around the corner could be a long way away if you're a snail, but only a few seconds if you're an ostrich.

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  2. Great news that an Android app is on the way. Thanks for keeping us informed

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  3. Well it's around the corner from the perspective of an IT development team, which is somewhere between a snail and an ostrich.

    Mind you we could be nearly "at" the corner which would be the same time for snail, ostrich and IT dev team.

    However we're not quite at the corner.
    But we can see the corner.

    If you think I'm obfuscating it's because:
    1) We'll release the app when it's "excellent" and not announce a launch date we then miss if we don't think it's "excellent" by then.
    2) I've always wanted to use the word "obfuscating" in my blog but never had cause. Until now. Thank you Dan.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for the update Nick. However long it takes It's nice to see us Android users aren't being overlooked.

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  5. I just googled Tesco Android App and found a couple of tweets (from mtail and mobilesquared) saying that the app is 2 months away! That doesn't sound like around the corner to me. I think we need some further obfuscation around where this corner might be in relation to the next 2 months. :-)

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  6. How can i get one of those pin badges?

    ReplyDelete
  7. so how long until this Tesco app will be released? Is it month or two or six. As I'm getting tempted to buy an unofficial app which I'd rather not if I knew the real deal would be coming in the near future.

    ReplyDelete

As this blog grows in readership - and because it carries the Tesco brand - I have had to become more careful about the sort of comments that are acceptable. The good news is that I'm a champion of free speech so please be as praising or as critical as you wish! The only comments I DON'T allow through are:

1. Comments which criticise an individual other than myself, or are critical of an organisation other than Tesco. This is simply because they cannot defend themselves so is unfair and possibly libellous. Comments about some aspect of Tesco being better/worse than another equivalent organisation are allowed as long as you start by saying "in my personal opinion.." or "I think that...". ... followed by a "...because.." and some reasoned argument.

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