There were over 1,300 companies exhibiting at the MWC show this year.

T&A/VIEWPOINT: The Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2010, held in Barcelona, Spain from February 15-18, has seen announcements, unveiling, keynotes and demonstrations that range from the extravagant, opulent, low-key to the controversial, humorous and head shaking-inducing resignation.

The annual event, held at the Fira de Barcelona, sees players from the mobile and networking industry converge across 8 different halls, showing latest mobile devices, networking equipment and negotiate roundtable talks.

Our peers at Singapore’s HardwareZone.com have put up coverage of the showfloor announcements from various key players over the last few days.

You can read about them here (Samsung), here (Sony Ericsson), here (Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 series) and here (general showfloor coverage).

Not only that, Nokia and Intel held a press conference announcing the merging of two of their respective platforms (Maemo and Moblin) into one called MeeGo. While Intel pointed out that MeeGo is not strictly a Nokia only platform, the announcement does pave the way for tighter integration of future Linux-based Nokia devices with Intel’s mobile chipset and platform initiatives.

We’re in the process of compiling videos of the event at the moment. Look out for them very soon. Stay tuned.

UPDATE 22/02/2010: Finally, we’ve got both our MWC videos up online. We’ve split our video coverage into two parts.

MWC 2010 Phone Demo Walkthrough - Part 1 of 2
Part 1 highlights phone demos of the Samsung Wave, its app store, the Sony Ericsson trio of phones and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 series.

MWC 2010 Phone Demo Walkthrough - Part 2 of 2
Part 2 of our MWC 2010 video coverage covers Garmin-ASUS nuvifone A50, the NTT DoCoMo Separable Phone, Motorola BACKFLIP, a phone by sports apparel Puma and HTC’s trio of phones — the Legend, Desire and HD mini.

The Google Voice app was rejected by Apple for its App Store but the service stubbornly returns as a Web app for both iPhone and Palm WebOS device users.

T&A: On September 2009, we posted news that Google Voice was rejected by Apple for its App Store service because it conflicts with Apple’s core telephony services on the iPhone. Well the app is back, this time in the form of a HTML5-based Web application accessible at m.google.com/voice via the Web browser on your mobile device.

According to Google’s blog, the Google Voice web app will be accessible for iPhone (version 3.0 or higher) and Palm WebOS device users. Functions within the app like AppCache, lets you interact with web apps without a network connection while local databases allow you to store data locally on the device, so even if you close the browser, you lose no data.

Google Voice basically does what a standard telephony service does, be it making phone calls, listen to voicemail, read voicemail transcripts, send/receive text messages as well as make international voice calls based on Google Voice’s international IDD rates.

Meanwhile, here’s a video demonstrating what Google Voice does:

This rendition of the Apple Tablet, by Flickr user Fotoboer.nl and picked up by many media sites, has been said by trusted sources to closely resemble the real Tablet, minus a few missing iPhone elements.

T&A: Fast Company.com has an opinion piece on what the rumored Apple Tablet may bring to the landscape. While many of us assume it would pose a challenge in the e-book reader marketplace, especially with speculation that the company may be in talks with books, newspapers and magazine publishers, the blog piece does postulate a pretty convincing case.

Even app developers feel the same way, based on this feature from The New York Times.

As smartphones become more interactive and intuitive, the portable games market may see itself being transformed from a Bluetooth-based or pass-on-to-the-next-player social gaming environments to tablet-top like digital board-game situations. It’s a compelling social element that would draw many of the iPhone game developers towards.

And knowing the marketplace, and where the app revenue pie really lies, it’s little wonder then that the Tablet could very well be competing not just with the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble nook and so on, but also with the game-related systems in your living room and beyond.

UPDATE 27/01/2010: Looks like the cat’s out of the bag? Mr. Terry McGraw, CEO of McGraw-Hill might have confirmed on air that Apple’s really releasing a tablet tomorrow. In a CNBC corporate earnings interview, at approximately the 2:50th-minute mark, he mentions that McGraw-Hill has been working with Apple for some time, that the device will sport the iPhone OS and will support transferability.

This could possibly mean two things: first, Apple will also be releasing an e-book reader for the iPhone and iPod Touch for cross-ebook transfers, and second, the Tablet may be aimed at the higher education market.

Here’s the CNBC video interview:

Project Natal by Microsoft uses the entire body as the controller.

Expect a battle to emerge among the PS3, Xbox360 and Wii this Christmas -- this time centered around games supporting motion sensing systems.

T&A: Initially announced and slated for release by Sony by Spring of this year, the motion controller of which a prototype was shown at E3 last year, will now makes its debut in Autumn this year, based on news from Reuters and BBC.

This puts its right-smack up against the planned launch of Microsoft’s Project Natal for the Xbox360, which according to Robbie Bach, Microsoft’s President for Entertainment & Devices Division at CES 2010, will launch by end-2010.

Project Natal is a radical controller-less motion sensing system where users use their entire body to navigate their avatars in-game. We’ve covered this as a news post awhile back.

The Sony PS3 motion controller is somewhat similar to the Wii motion sensing controller, except that in the PS3’s case, the PlayStation Eye camera atop the HDTV will detect the movements of a special light-emitting sphere on the controller instead of using infra-red sensors like the Wii.

Expect the console gaming season in Christmas 2010 to be one of the hottest ever as different console manufacturers, and game publishers for the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3, release games that tap on these new motion sensing systems.

Meanwhile, here’s a video of Sony’s PS3 prototyped motion sensing controllers in action at last year’s E3 2009 event in Los Angeles, USA.

T&A: As trends go, the success of recent 3-D movies like Avatar and Up, makes for a compelling reason for TV networks to jump on the bandwagon. Sports network ESPN has announced that it will launch the world’s first 3-D TV network called ESPN 3-D.

A 3-D production camera used by ESPN for the Ohio State college football telecast taken on Sept 12, 2009 in the Ohio Stadium in Columbus (a.k.a. The Horseshoe).

The first planned telecast is the 2010 FIFA World Cup match between South Africa and Mexico on June 11, and will follow up with 24 World Cup matches in 3-D over the following weeks. The network plans to broadcast a minimum of 85 live sporting events on the channel over the year.

Other planned 3-D broadcasts include the 2011 BCS National Championship Game, college basketball and football contests.

Separately, Reuters reported that documentary network Discovery has joined ranks with Sony Corp and IMAX to launch a dedicated 3-D channel in the US in 2011. Expect the three-way partnership network to feature documentaries in natural history, space, exploration and adventure.

Despite all these announcements from the different networks, you might wonder if viewers at home are equipped with the right tools to enjoy the 3-D experience at all. Basically, TV sets need to be 3-D ready and viewers need special glasses to merge the stereoscopic signals from these broadcasts. Until we hear more, the jury’s out on this one for now.

Paolo Manzano, Managing Editor, HWM Philippines

Paolo (HWM Philippines): 3-D TV is an interesting concept. I have personally seen a rough approximation of the technology thanks to NVIDIA’s 3-D Vision. I imagine that the experience, in this case, would be roughly the same.

However, at least in the context of the Philippines, 3-D is quite a long time away for the mainstream consumer. As it is, while LCD and even LED panels have been enjoying brisk sales, the impetus towards providing consumers with massive HD content in the form of affordable Blu-ray players and consoles, media such as Blu-ray discs and games, as well as the all important HD TV broadcasts are still in infancy and lacking far behind what is available in developed countries. This needs to catch up first before consumers can even begin thinking of a world in 3-D.

Another barrier of entry is pricing, not only of the panels, but also of the glasses needed to create the effect. The initial costs for a family of five to enjoy a 3-D movie on Saturday nights are staggering, with perhaps the TV coming in at USD$2,500 to USD$3,000 and the glasses being priced at around USD$100-150 each.

This does not include the costs of enjoying media such as a live 3-D broadcast or a set top box that can actually read and decode the necessary signals needed for the effect.