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What to expect from Mobile World Congress 2012

James Thornton

James Thornton

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Want to know what 2012’s must-have apps will be? Keen to find out what the mobile phone of the future will look like? Will Windows phones ever be cooler than an iPhone?

Stay tuned, because next Monday’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) could hold the answers to these questions, and many more. The World’s biggest mobile industry conference kicks off in Barcelona on the 27 February and the Softonic team will be there to check out the latest mobile innovations and cool apps at the event.

What will we see at MWC?

The tag line for this year’s MWC is ‘Redefining Mobile’. So we expect to see lots of innovative new ways for people to interact with their mobile devices. Here are some of the themes that are sure to be big this year:

Messaging – 2011 was a massive year for chat and messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Viber and eBuddy. These free Voice and text messaging apps are taking money away from the big mobile operators, so it’s possible some will launch their own chat apps at MWC 2012.

Health – Apps designed to monitor and improve your health are on the rise, and lots of investment is going into these areas. We’ll no doubt see some of the latest potentially life-saving examples of this at this year’s MWC.

Cloud services – Online storage and backup solutions are on the rise, and it seems every app developer wants to exploit this market. We’re sure to see a lot of Cloud-based software at MWC 2012. Whether there’s anything that really catches people’s imagination is another story.

HTML 5 – HTML 5 is changing the way developers build mobile apps. It allows them to create special mobile experiences that run across all operating systems, all browsers, and all devices.

Operating systems – The mobile OS market is as hotly contested as it’s been in a long time, and we expect announcements at the event from the likes of Microsoft (launch of the mobile-friendly Windows 8), RIM (launch of BlackBerry OS 10), Nokia (more details of its plans for Symbian/Meego/Windows Phone), and Android (maybe more details on its next OS, JellyBean)

Augmented Reality – Always touted as a future trend, Augmented Reality has yet to really capture the collective imagination of the general public. This could change this year though with the launch of latest generation apps such as Scalado Remove, a cutting-edge augmented reality app that helps you lose your head!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flNomXIIWr4[/youtube]

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Be sure to follow us on Twitter (@softonic_en) to get all the latest news, gossip, and details of cool apps we’ve seen at the event.

James Thornton

James Thornton

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