New Chinese cellular wireless handset products at the ITU Telecom Americas in Brazil - Oct 2005

The TF Wireless Database is researched by attending each of the major telecom exhibitions around the world. The most recent was ITU Telecom Americas in Salvador, Brazil in October 2005.

Over 200 new fully-indexed images of wireless handset manufacturers' stands, products and displays were added to the relational research TF Wireless Database following the regional ITU event.

The TF Wireless Database currently contains 11,000+ research images of cellular wireless handset products and stands from thirteen major telecom exhibitions held during the past year. The latest, complete and fully-searchable database is available on DVD.
Only ten new wireless handset products were seen at the ITU Telecom Americas exhibition held in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil in Oct 05.
The floor plan shows that there was only a handful of exhibitors at ITU Telecom Americas.
The ITU Telecom Americas show was held in Salvador da Bahia in 3-6 October 2005. It was a surprise to find such a poor turn-out of wireless handset exhibitors. The exhibition itself was small.

In the past, some ITU shows have been well-attended events. Even the regional ones. Admittedly the last ITU Telecom Americas show attended by the writer was the Rio event in about 1995. Unless the memory is playing tricks, the ITU event in Rio a decade ago had a major turn-out of cellular handset industry players.

Not so at the ITU Telecom Americas event in Bahia in 2005. Without Huawei, ZTE, and Qualcomm there would have been no wireless handset manufacturers present at all.

Although Nokia were present, their stand was purely a "VIP refreshment area". There were no cellular handset products, or indeed any other products, on the Nokia display. The two major Chinese manufacturers (Huawei and ZTE) had the largest stands at the event with both showing cellular infrastructure and handsets. Huawei also had a large out-door display with several trucks loaded with demonstration wireless network infrastructure.

Chinese wireless infrastructure companies Tongyu and XAHT were also present.

The list of significant wireless handset no-shows is almost endless, but suffice it to say that there was no Motorola, no Sony Ericsson and not even any presence from the normally expansive Korean exhibitors LG and Samsung.

Japan's Kyocera was present, but only with their solar panels. No sign of any wireless phones.

One Brazilian distributor, Meflur, had a small display of Nokia handsets. The Brazilian operator Oi had a full display of handset products in the foyer away from the main exhibition hall. Vivo was tucked away in an office up-stairs.

Among the handful of other exhibitors at the Bahia ITU event there were small national stands from France, Spain and Venezuela.

ZTE had a display of both GSM and CDMA phones. Five ZTE wireless products which had not been seen before were the CDMA C150, CDMA C230 and an unnamed CDMA wireless PC card, and the GSM A89 and the GSM E3.

The seven wireless products on the Huawei stand not seen at least once before included the U636 (W-CDMA) and the ETS 310, ETS 1001, ETS 2077 and ETS 2238 (all for CDMA 450), as well as the ETS 2288 (for CDMA 800). However the greatest surprise was the Huawei GSM/GPRS/EDGE/W-CDMA (with HSDPA) E620 wireless PC card, as HSDPA products are still relatively few and far between.

Two other relatively unknown phones seen at the ITU Telecom Americas show was the Gradiente Strike Blue GCL-1 (Brazilian) displayed by network operator Oi and the Korean made (Cellvic) Mycube N110 which was part of the Qualcomm display.

The Bahia venue had short-comings. The exhibition hall was not air-conditioned. Parts of it were sweltering. There was an open roof which was supposed to catch the sea breeze to cool the hall. However in practice the environment within the Bahia Convention Center (except the fourth floor where the ITU had their air-conditioned show offices) was uncomfortable for exhibitors and for visitors alike.

A Brazilian organised event - Futurecom in Florianópolis in southern Brazil - later in the same month would appear to have greater support from the world's wireless handset manufacturing industry and from the Brazilian wireless network operators than did the ITU Telecom Americas 2005 show in Salvador da Bahia.
Full details of all the cellular wireless handset products seen at the ITU Telecom Americas exhibition in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil are included in the current issue of the TF Wireless Database which contains over 11,000 fully-indexed research images from the thirteen major telecom events held around the world during the past year.

Nigel Cawthorne
Managing Editor
TF Wireless Database

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