According to the press, this year’s CeBIT in Hannover somewhat resembled its own “alternative” version: less colorful, less noisy, less visited. Everywhere there was talk of the “crisis as a chance”, mixed moods of doom and optimism. Furthermore, the organizers came up with a new concept for the event labeled “Webciety” — standardized exhibition honeycombs that can be fed with content via Internet, as to pay a tribute to the growing relevance of the online world.

In the field of mobile communication, the increasing amalgamation of cell phones and navigation systems constituted a focal point, to which a special event under the title “Navigation Day” was dedicated at the expo. Eagerly awaited were the fruits of the cooperation between Taiwanese hardware makers Asus and US-American navigation systems experts Garmin: the Nüvifone G60, a “navigational cell phone”  that had already been announced one year ago, as well as its new colleague, the Nüvifone M20. These devices are supposed to enhance the functionality and the performance of conventional navigation systems by allowing additional data retrieval via cell phone networks — similar to the approach from the opposite direction that’s been made by connected navigation systems (that is: “cellular navigation systems” instead of “navigational cell phones”) for some while. This way, up-to-date location-based data like points of interest (POI), traffic jam reports or the weather, too, can be integrated more efficiently and extensively. Among others, O₂ also showed their own navigational cell (Xda Guide), likewise Nokia (6710 Navigator).

CeBIT ‘09: FTD interview Garmin’s product manager Olaf Meng (simply click on the play button)

The great exposition highlight was nowhere to be found though. Clearly, attention revolved around hardware updates and hardware competition. Take Toshiba’s TG01 for example, which is planned to give the iPhone some real hell by virtually doubling its performance specs. HTC on the other hand presented the first touchscreen-only smartphone using the Android operating system — the HTC Magic. (Although previously, the physical keyboard had been presented as one of the selling points of the G1 against the iPhone.) Meanwhile, Sony-Ericsson’s iDou challenges Apple not just with its suspicious naming: this touchscreen-only smartphone not only offers a 3.5 inch 16:9 display exhibiting an elegant Symbian user interface but sets new benchmarks as a steroidal camera cell phone with its 12.5 megapixels plus xenon flashlight.

Generally, a remarkable lot of touchscreen-only devices were shown — possibly becoming the new standard for smartphones? At any rate, Nokia made a whimsical counterpoint: The E75 is virtually carpeted with buttons, as its comparatively tiny screen almost shyly cowers in the corner. The target group is heavy email- and sms-writers.

It’s Samsung who deserve special mention for lighting a beacon of environment-friendly high-tech with their cell phone newcomer Blue Earth. For one, on the backside of its casing made of recycled plastic bottles there’s a solar module, which at good lighting conditions supplies the phone with the bulk of its required energy. Also, the included power pack features a not insignificantly higher energy efficiency than conventional models as well as a particularly energy-saving standby mode.

One hardware trend that’s going to continue for some more years was confirmed at the exposition: Not only are smartphones being more and more upgraded towards full-fledged PCs — PCs also get increasingly miniaturized towards smartphones. Ever more compact, ever more portable. I think that throughout the next five to ten years, these two developments will converge until at the end, there’ll only be one type of portable mini-computer that unites the purviews of both branches. Whether this will be more of a compressed PC with VoIP functionality or rather a souped-up smartphone, I dare not guess. Either way, the common desktop PC will disappear from the main consumer sector and  retreat into the niches of hardware tinkerers and high performance computing. Even today, it’s already more and more frequently getting replaced by laptop and subnotebook PCs, whereas previously, they used to be bought merely as complements. Big format screens and full-size keyboards will be set up without any PC in order to be accessed by the mobile computer devices whenever required. Stationary PCs will become obsolete, as everyone’s got their own PC with them — pocket-sized. From this perspective, even the rosiest predictions on the expansion of the mobile entertainment business appear to be understated, if one considers that this way, basically the whole of today’s digital “non-mobile” entertainment business would be merged into it.