S60 Open to new features

It’s already a week since the Mobile World Congress ended and I guess it’s finally time for me to summarize some of the highlights from the event for S60 as well as for me personally.

We saw the launch of six new devices from three S60 licensees: LG, Nokia and Samsung. The announcements in Barcelona brought the total number of S60 devices launched up to 73. The S60 Team was also proud to tell that the number of devices shipped by S60 licensees by the end of January 2008 is over 150 million. Over third of the devices are S60 3rd Edition.

With these new devices S60 is the first mobile software platform with integrated widget support. The devices launched in Barcelona include widget support enabled by S60 web run-time application development framework. I had the pleasure to have Ganesh Sivaraman as my guest on the Voice of S60 podcast to talk about widgets and web run-times.

Another exciting news was the announcement of Nokia Maps 2.0, which takes mapping and navigation experiences to the next level by enhancing pedestrian navigation, adding multimedia city guides, offering satellite images, and sporting a redesigned user interface. Nokia also announced Share on Ovi, which offers a community where people can socialize, interact and collaborate.

This was the first Mobile World Congress for me and the experience all in all was great, though standing on your feet for 10 hours in a day, four days in a row is certainly exhausting. I was really happy to have a chance to meet some of the people face-to-face whom I’ve met online and also hope to stay in touch with them all!

Below’s a nice video shot by Neil that summarizes some of the things that went on in Barcelona. Have a nice weekend!