In an interview with GigaOM, Vestberg said that 4G business models, not infrastructure or devices, was the far bigger theme at Mobile World Congress this year – it’s what he’s spending time talking about in Barcelona this week with Ericsson’s hundreds of carrier customers

“We’re at this inflection point where we’ve built the networks, but we still haven’t worked out the business models,” Vestberg said. “Some of our customers are taking very different directions.”

European operators are testing the potential of 4G being a premium-priced data service, charging more for a megabyte of LTE than a megabyte of HSPA. In the U.S., AT&T and Verizon are barreling ahead with shared data plans. Vestberg says he’s witnessing many more business models emerging as operators start experimenting with enterprise and machine-to-machine data plans as well as continuing to tinker with their consumer data pricing.

Carriers are still debating whether they should be big pipes selling mobile broadband by the gigabyte, or applications and data services providers that inject something tangible into that bitstream, Vestberg said.

Many operators have begun to think beyond smartphones and focus on the internet of things, Vestberg said, connecting everything from tablets to cars to home appliances. At Mobile World Congress, for example, AT&T and General Motors announced plans to embed LTE into millions of future cars as an upgrade to GM’s OnStar service. Several other carriers were demonstrating connected home and connected city applications at MWC, sticking LTE radios in smart utility meters, public transit and healthcare devices.

“What devices can we connect that will create a more efficient life for people?” Vestberg said. “[Carriers have] already identified a lot of those devices. It’s more a question of who and how and when they’ll monetize them.”

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The folks at MobileGeeks took the prototype for a spin at MWC and you’ll immediately notice that the device is not quite ready for the market. Meaning: the touchscreen isn’t calibrated properly and the display refresh rate isn’t as fast as it needs to be. Still, there’s potential here if the technology improves.

Ideally, these lower-powered e-ink displays would offer fast frame rates and even color; some companies have attempted this in the past — namely Qualcomm and Pixel Qi — but actual products have been lackluster at best. In fact, Qualcomm ceased making screens with its Mirasol display technology and instead began licensing the tech last year.

Are we really close to smartphones that use e-ink touchscreens and last for weeks on a single charge? Not likely. But I could easily envision voice capability in a connected e-ink reader device.

We’re long past the point where voice is an activity limited solely to a “phone.” Communication is evolving to where we want to be in contact with others through a connected device no matter what that device is: A computer, a tablet, a game console, a television or even an e-ink reader. Well, as long we can turn the ringer off when we’re reading!

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To accomplish this the GSM Association launched a new initiative called the OneAPI Exchange at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The idea is to create an application programming interface (API) that any mobile app developer can use to authenticate new users against a carrier’s subscriber identity data. So far AT&T, Orange, Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica and Vodafone have all signed on to the program, and together they represent a healthy chunk of the world’s mobile subscribers.

At first glance, the initiative seems like a nifty idea. If there is one thing every mobile subscriber in the world has it’s a phone number, making it ideal as a universal credential. But operators are also hoping to be more than just a username replacement. In a demo at Mobile World Congress, the GSMA showed off a bike rental app, in which carrier data was used not only to identify the user, but verify location and charge the rental to the customer’s mobile bill.

Obviously carriers are looking to make themselves relevant once again in the applications market and take a cut from any mobile transaction. This time they actually stand a chance of succeeding. Unlike previous API initiatives, the GSMA has actually figured out a way to make OneAPI near universal. Instead of tapping into separate APIs and crafting separate business agreements with every operator, developers just have to build to one API and strike one carrier deal, but the identity feature will work across all carriers’ networks.

The development house that built the OneAPI Exchange, Apigee, wasn’t able to eliminate the widespread fragmentation among carriers’ API platforms, but it rather ingeniously found a way around it. Apigee’s head of marketing, Dave Jordan, explained that the exchange acts as universal bridge between the operators’ disparate network interfaces.

A developer just picks a single operator to deal with and then builds to that operator’s API, Jordan said. If the app is downloaded on a different operator’s network the exchange will automatically map that carrier’s API onto the app, he said. For instance, if a developer were to pick AT&T’s API, any Orange or Telefónica customer could log in to the app using his carrier’s credentials, but AT&T would federate all of the transactions across those networks.

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At first glance, the FonePad looks extremely similar to the Google Nexus 7 tablet. It has the same 1280 x 800 resolution 7-inch touchscreen, an optional rear camera — only 3 megapixels, however — and the Google Android Jelly Bean software. Two key differences stand out though: The speaker atop the display and the Intel Inside message on the tablet’s back panel. Yes, this is an Intel Atom tablet, running at 1.2 GHz and paired with 1 GB of memory. Battery life is expected to be nine hours.

The choice of Intel Atom over an ARM-based chip likely won’t matter much to consumers as most Android apps now work with chips based on the x86 architecture. The bigger difference then is that speaker on the front of the device and the integrated support for cellular voice calls.

Asus isn’t the first to try this approach of merging a cell phone and 7-inch tablet though. The original Samsung Galaxy Tab I bought in Dec. 2010 had the same functionality. There was only one problem with it: Voice calling software was stripped out of the Galaxy Tab for the U.S. market on all four major carriers. I suspect the same will happen with the new FonePad as well.

So while my overseas friends were chatting away on their Tabs — either handsfree or with a Bluetooth / wired headset — I had to root and install custom modem software on mine as a voice hack. Unfortunately, when voice calling was active, the 3G data connection wasn’t and vice versa. The “solution” was never fully baked and I ended up using the tablet with a data-only SIM card for VoIP calls, giving me the best of both worlds. U.S. carriers never embraced this though and why would they when they can sell you two devices with fees for both?

Indeed, there’s no indication of the Asus FonePad even coming to the U.S. market. CNET notes the price and availability as limited:

The FonePad will be landing in the U.K. between April and June, likely toward the end of June and costing £179, or 219 euros in the rest of the continent. That’s a tad more expensive than the Nexus 7, so it’ll need to impress in terms of performance and battery life.

It’ll reach Asia-Pacific around the same time for $249. Unfortunately there’s no word on a release in the U.S., but Asus does have a habit of bringing its devices stateside. Fingers crossed, folks.

Yup, we can cross our fingers but I doubt it will do any good. Not until we move to Voice over LTE do I expect a traditional small tablet to include carrier support for voice calling in this country. And that’s a huge disappointment when there’s really no good technical reason for carriers to not support this functionality.

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GM said it would use the increased bandwidth to offer new infotainment features such as audio and video streaming direct to the car in addition to the usual complement of OnStar navigation, security and emergency services.

The deal is a bit puzzling because it contradicts the bring-your-connectivity strategy GM has adopted of late. While GM cars are all linked via cellular networks for its low-bandwidth telematics services, GM has relied on it customer’s smartphones to provide the heftier connections necessary to support infotainment services.

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NSN is partnering with IBM to embed the latter’s WebSphere applications hosting servers into its future base station design, with the idea of turning the radio access network into both a baseband processing and computing platform. Putting content closer to the consumer isn’t a new concept in mobile – Ericsson and Akamai teamed up two years ago to do just that – but NSN is talking about a lot more than just caching video or routing traffic more efficiently.

Mobile applications and radio infrastructure have always been walled off from one another – applications just barrel ahead onto their radio on-ramps oblivious to the highway traffic conditions ahead. What NSN proposes to do with Liquid Apps is to make those disparate portions of the network work in unison.

For example, mobile video today can be a precarious proposition. As video viewers rack up in a particular cell, the network will keep trying to cram those video streams into the same limited airwaves, The result is a backed-up network with no one getting a quality video stream – or any stream at all. By processing video at the cell site, though, the base station could make decisions how to deliver those individual video feeds based on the prevailing network conditions.

If the cell is congested, then the base station downgrades the video quality of every stream, ensuring everyone sees a decent-quality picture. And as users gradually vacate the cell, the base station could gradually boost video quality for those that remain.

The architecture could also produce some noticeable increases in performance, say, if a subscriber was playing a network-based game. Instead of reaching across the many nodes of the backhaul, transport and core networks – as well as the Internet itself – a game hosted at the base station would have near zero latency, making the possibility of network-hosted, fast-twitch, real-time action game feasible.

Ironically, Liquid Apps is going in the opposite direction of NSN’s overall network strategy. In the last few years, NSN has promoted the concept of a cloud-based architecture, called Liquid Radio, where much of the intelligence and raw processing power of the network leaves the cell-site and becomes a virtualized set of shared resources. At NSN’s press conference on Sunday, mobile broadband chief Marc Rouanne said that the two approaches actually complement, rather than contradict, one another.

“We need computing capacity at both ends,” Rouanne said. “That’s what operators love about it.” NSN’s Liquid fabric has never called for excising processing capabilities completely from the cell site. Instead Liquid Radio is redistributing the intelligence of the network throughout the edge and core, allowing – as its name implies – to flow to wherever its most needed. Rouanne said, NSN now is taking the same approach to applications: relocating a portion of them from the core to the network fringes.

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According to Spotify Global Head of Hardware Partnerships Pascal de Mul, the updated iPhone (No word on Android support yet) will soon be able to pair with the dashboard AppLink system, streaming music through the car’s entertainment systems. Users will be able to play their songs, playlists and radio stations and even be able to create new radio stations on the fly with simple voice commands, he said.

Ford has been loading up on music streaming apps in AppLink, making it a key initial focus of its connected car strategy. Its library of supported services includes Pandora, Amazon Cloud Player, MOG Music, Slacker, and Rhapsody as well as multiple radio station’s digital apps.

Ford CTO Paul Mascarenas said digital music streaming figures right into Sync’s sweet spot. Ford doesn’t have to explain the utility of the services to the driving public since music is already the most popular form of entertainment in the car. The integration of a streaming service into Sync is relatively simple. And since the content is audio only and can be manipulated through Sync commands, the apps all easily meet Ford’s requirements that no connected car app distract a driver from the road, he said.

At the show Ford also revealed it is adding AppLink connectivity to its EcoSport crossover SUV (pictured at top) just in time for its European debut. For also brought several apps Europe that were previously available in U.S. cars: Kaliki, Glympse and Aha Radio.

We got a chance to sit down with Mascarenas for a few minutes at MWC to get a quick update on Ford’s new open development platform, originally unveiled at CES. Though the program is barely more than a month old, 2500 developers have already signed up and downloaded the SDK. Many of those devs have already completed apps and have submitted them to Ford, and a few those apps actually received final approval, Mascarenas said. Mascarenas said Ford plans to announced those apps in the coming weeks.

Spotfiy doesn’t count since it began working with Ford before the development program was launched, Mascarenas said, but the program has opened up Sync to a lot of smaller developers who wouldn’t usually get Ford’s direct attention. Ford is now faced with a distribution and discovery issue. “If you go into an app store, there’s no easy way to find the apps that AppLink-enabled, Mascarenas said.

When the number of Sync apps was small, Ford could promote them individually. But there are now 63 AppLink-optimized apps, and that number will grow significantly as the apps start emerging from the developer program. Ford is working on ways to catalog them. Whether that means creating its own app store or portal Android or working with Apple and Google to spotlight connected car software, Mascarenas didn’t say. Ford could also go with the approach, GM appears to be adopting and create a catalog in the dashboard itself.

Correction: An early version of this post stated that Spotify’s Sync integration capabilities would be available on both Android and iOS devices. However the initial launch will support only the iPhone. 

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At the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona this week, Qualcomm plans to announce four new implementations of AllJoyn that will allow for seamless notifications, audio streaming from and to any device, onboarding devices onto the network and AllJoyn platform and exporting the control interfaces for devices to other platforms on the network. So when you enter your home in an AllJoyn world your smartphone could send the song you’re listening to over to your home stereo no matter who makes the handset and who makes the stereo (or speakers). Same thing would happen if you wanted to ship the music to your car.

AllJoyn and Qualcomm’s vision for the internet of things

AllJoyn is tough to explain, in part because most of us aren’t that familiar with mesh networking. We’re far more used to having our radios send data up to the cloud and then have that data combine with other services while in a server off in a distant data center. Some companies are proposing we move that connectivity closer to home in some kind of smart gateway device ( in that case your data is sent to a box in your home and then combined with other data to perform a service).

Qualcomm, however, is thinking a bit differently. “I don’t need to control my light bulb from Tahiti,” says Rob Chandhok, president of Qualcomm’s Innovation Center. “When you have 1,500 connected devices in your house I don’t think you want all of them connected to the public internet.”

Instead Qualcomm has built a software overlay that can work on any processor and hopefully on any operating system. Right now it does this via an application, but Chandhok hopes that consumer electronics makers will integrate it into the firmware on their many devices in the future. He says Qualcomm already has customers, but he declined to name them. For consumers, the end result is that you can install applications on your smartphone that will work with AllJoyn compatible devices and control them from your handset.

The platform is nice, but the implementation will drive adoption.

Qualcomm has been working on the AllJoyn software development kit for a few years, and has released the basics. But today’s news tries to help speed adoption by offering not just the SDK and specs for the platform, but the implementations. It’s not enough to give someone a fishing rod, sometimes you need to teach her how to cast the line. With these implementations, especially the audio, which Qualcomm developed in conjunction with doubleTwist, it hopes to show developers and consumers how powerful the platform can be.

Chandhok expects that we will see more consumer devices hit the market at the end of the year that feature AllJoyn compatibility. When I asked him how it compared with other efforts to connect devices in the home, such as SmartThings‘ hub or Mobiplug’s gateway, he said that in many ways those companies are concerned with creating a way to get everything on the internet and then to control it. Qualcomm may work with those companies, and they can certainly incorporate AllJoyn, but again, he’s not convinced that every item needs to be online.

And if these new implementations work out and the big name customers Chandhok doesn’t reference start releasing products, he may be right. Most people don’t care if everything is online– they just want an experience and service that’s easy and provides more functionality without adding inconvenience. The next big question will be around the partners Qualcomm find to help contribute to AllJoyn, develop applications that work with it and embed AllJoyn compliant hardware and software into their devices.

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Ssangyong doesn’t have quite the international pedigree of the WPC’s first car partner Toyota, but in an automotive market that traditionally takes years to plan and develop its products, the fact that Qi is making headway with any carmakers is nothing to scoff at. While the Qi platform has seen interest from many automakers, some are going to faster than others in adopting the technology, said Peter Hoehne, VP of sales and marketing for Leggett & Platt, which designed the automotive charging system.

Some are introducing Qi at the beginning of the design and development process, meaning their Qi-enabled cars won’t be out for several years, Hoehne said. Meanwhile, others are choosing to include the technology into vehicles relatively late in their development processes, he said. That was the approach Toyota adopted for the Avalon, getting the technology into its most recent 2013 model for the North American market.

Instead of relying on a cord, Qi uses induction to transfer an electric charge to your mobile phone. Typically users buy a separate charging pad they can place their phones, but in a few cases the technology is getting embedded directly into furniture and on other surfaces people are likely to place their phones. There are now 36 different Qi-integrated or Qi-ready devices, according to the WPC. Many of them, like the Samsung Galaxy S III, don’t support the technology out of the box, but require customers to buy a separate battery back plate embedded with the Qi receiver coils.

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You can use remote gestures to control your laptop, your video game console and your TV. So why not the device you use more than any other?

In a similar fashion to how Microsoft’s Kinect brought gesture controls to the Xbox, PointGrab, using a different technology, is trying to bring hands-free, gesture-based control to iOS games and apps. Gestures can be easily learned and perhaps even more natural than learned input mechanisms like tap to zoom or pinch to enlarge, PointGrab VP of Marketing Assaf Gad argues.

“The same way we as people interact with each other, we can allow devices to understand our body language,” he told me via Skype from PointGrab’s headquarters in Hod Hasharon, Israel last week.

For example, he said, all children know the finger-to-lips “shush” gesture that means “quiet down.” So, rather than hunting for a button or volume menu to lower the volume, why can’t our devices know that action means we want the sound muted?

Motion control can be natural and fun — hands-free Angry Birds, anyone? — but occasionally necessary too: devices that understand remote gestures would let you, for example, scroll down the recipe you have open on your iPad while your hands are still wet or covered in raw egg.

How it works

PointGrab doesn’t require additional hardware to make this happen — it uses the device’s own camera. PointGrab’s technology uses motion-detecting algorithms to identify the X and Y coordinates of a person’s hand through the camera. Gad says the software can detect a single finger up to 17 feet away. Here’s a video Laptop Mag shot at CES 2013 of a free app PointGrab created simply to demonstrate its technology on an iPhone or iPad.

You can also download that app, called CamMe, from the iOS App Store yourself. I tried it out and it works as promised although it’s occasionally a bit slow: if you want a self-portrait or group photo but don’t have Inspector Gadget arms, you can use this by setting your device on something, raising your hand to turn on the camera from a couple feet away and closing your fist when you’re ready. The app counts down three seconds before snapping the photo. The downside is you’re using the front-facing camera, which isn’t as good as the iPhone’s rear camera.

Gad emphasizes that this isn’t supposed to replace a touchscreen altogether but is for use in certain cases: “We’re extending a user interface for specific scenarios in mobile.”

A gesture-controlled future

But there’s growing momentum in this space. In the living room, it’s already moved from futuristic fantasy to Thing Normal People Use, thanks to Microsoft’s success with the Kinect. And Samsung, the world’s largest TV maker, wants to replace your remote with your hand when controlling its new smart TVs.

But the most high profile up-and-comer now trying to make gesture-based computing happen for a broader user segment is Leap Motion, whose mission is to bring 3D motion control to computers. (Its website contains the rather cheeky phrase, “Typing? Seriously? That’s fine for writing a novel.”) It recently got $30 million in venture funding to try to pull this off.

PointGrab, meanwhile, has been around since 2008. Its gesture-control software has been in Fujitsu laptops since 2010, and the company has worked with Acer and Samsung on laptops too. But PointGrab is looking past laptops now; it wisely sees the future is more mobile and is attempting to get developers interested in using the technology in their iOS apps.

The thing LeapMotion has going for it that PointGrab does not yet is active third-party developer interest — there are 12,000 developers working with LeapMotion’s SDK. But PointGrab hopes to change that soon. This week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, PointGrab is for the first time opening up its SDK to anyone who wants to give it a whirl.

Gad is particularly hoping for forward-thinking developers who aren’t satisfied with only touch or voice-based control of the iPhone or iPad. “I think existing applications always try to find another way for interaction or another way to suggest new features to the user. I believe our technology will ad another capability.”

PointGrab’s SDK will be free at first for those who have “good ideas” for how to apply the software to their apps.

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