Kickstarter-backed film bags Oscar

25 February 2013 Last updated at 08:34 ET By Dave Lee Technology reporter, BBC News

The true story of a 15-year-old homeless girl has become the first Kickstarter-funded film to win an Oscar.

Inocente was made with the help of $52,527 (£35,000) raised by 294 backers in June last year.

The documentary was awarded with the prize for best documentary short at the ceremony.

Two other crowd-funded films, Kings Point and Buzkashi Boys, were also nominated but came away empty-handed.

Speaking to Mashable, Inocente's co-director Seth Fine said of crowd-funding: "It really helped galvanise a community."

"It helped fund a bunch of the film and kept us going through post-production. It's a great outlet for films, especially for documentaries."

Continue reading the main story

Often they are about topics that are shunned by the normal funders because they might be too risky"

End Quote Elliot Grove Founder, Raindance Film Festival

The win has been seen as further proof that crowd-funding has established itself as an important revenue stream for independent film-makers looking to abandon traditional routes to the screen.

Other sites such as Indiegogo and Wefund.com also back films.

"Crowd-funding has become a very important part of any film-maker's finance strategy," said Elliot Grove, founder of the Raindance Film Festival and British Independent Film Awards.

'Feeling pretty good'

He told the BBC about 30% of the 250 films on show at Raindance last year had been crowd-funded - a "huge increase" on the previous year.

Among them was How Do You Write A Joe Schermann Song, which won the film-of-the-festival award.

"It means that you cut out the middleman," Mr Grove told the BBC. "You go straight to the money and go straight to the audience.

"The crowd-funders will have a personal stake in this - if you put 50 or 100 bucks on an Oscar-winning film, you'll be feeling pretty good about yourself today."

In previous years, other Kickstarter-backed films have been nominated, including Incident in New Baghdad, Sun Come Up, and The Barber of Birmingham.

The films have been met with considerable critical acclaim. According to website Rotten Tomatoes - which creates an aggregate score based on hundreds of film review sites - three of the 20 best-reviewed films of 2012 were Kickstarter-funded.

Backing a cause

Mr Grove said he believed that while crowd-funding allowed film-makers to circumvent traditional studios and publishers, it had not meant a drop in quality.

"The lower barrier to entry is not so much to do with crowd-funding, but to do with digital film-making.

"If anything crowd-funding means the films are better because they have to convince the audience, their funders, that what they're making is worth making."

A blog post by Kickstarter earlier this year revealed that since launching in 2009, the site has raised $85m (£56m) for independent films, funding more than 8,000 individual projects.

The majority of this money has gone towards documentary films. Mr Grove credits this to the appeal of backing not only a film, but a cause.

"Often they are about topics that are shunned by the normal funders because they might be too risky or politically incorrect - which makes what we as viewers get to see so much more interesting."

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North Korea to launch mobile internet

22 February 2013 Last updated at 07:06 ET

North Korean mobile phone provider Koryolink is planning to launch a 3G data service for foreign visitors and residents from abroad.

Egyptian telecoms firm Orascom, which is a partner in Koryolink, estimates that more than 1 million North Koreans use mobile phones.

They will not be able to use the new service, according to reports.

Orascom launched a 3G phone network inside North Korea in 2008, but users can only use it to make phone calls.

International calls, including calls to South Korea, are banned.

In January 2013 the government began allowing foreign visitors to bring their own mobile devices into the country with them for the first time.

Following a recent visit to the notoriously closed country, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt wrote in a blog post that North Korea's decision to isolate itself "is very much going to affect their physical world and their economic growth."

He added that it would be "very easy" for 3G internet access to be enabled on the existing service.

Current internet access is extremely limited for locals, with most people only having access to a small number of state-run pages.

North Korea expert Scott Thomas Bruce previously told the BBC this comprises mainly "message boards, chat functions, and state sponsored media".

"The system they've set up is one that they can control and tear down if necessary," he said.

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Apple patent hints at smart watch

22 February 2013 Last updated at 10:58 ET

Fresh evidence that Apple has been working on a smart watch concept since at least 2011 has emerged in a patent filing.

The document describes a flexible touchscreen display which would communicate with a smartphone or other electronic device.

It coincides with a report from a tech consultancy suggesting there is huge pent up demand for such a gadget.

But ABI Research warns that battery life issues still need to be addressed.

It says assuming such problems can be resolved, about 485 million wearable computing devices might ship by 2018, providing a significant growth opportunity for Apple and the wider consumer electronics industry.

Not all published patents lead to actual products, but Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have all published reports this month saying sources had confirmed Apple was experimenting with a watch-like device.

The iPhone-maker declined to comment when contacted by the BBC.

Slap wraps

The US Patent Office only revealed Apple's filing on Thursday, but the document dates back to August 2011.

The mooted device is likened to a "slap wrap" - a thin strip of metal covered in fabric which snapped around the user's wrist to form a bracelet.

The toy was popular with teenagers in the late-1980s, but fell out of favour after complaints that it lost its ability to retain its shape over time,. There were also complaints that some users had experienced injuries after the fabric wore away to reveal a sharp metal edge.

Apple puts a hi-tech spin on the idea proposing a "slap bracelet" featuring a flexible circuit board and display, a touch sensitive user interface and a two-way communication chip, which would curl around the user's skin.

It suggests the gadget could detect which part of its surface was covered so that its readout would be limited to the exposed screen, with information flowing over the join.

Apple suggests lights along the device's edge could be programmed to blink when the user receives an alert, before displaying the details on its screen.

It says the user could then provide a brief response or use the bracelet to command a wirelessly connected smartphone, tablet or laptop to carry out another function such as adjusting the order of a song playlist or reviewing what recent calls had been made.

Apple acknowledges that the relatively thin nature of a wrist band would limit its uses, but suggests a wider armband could also be developed.

"At the width of a few inches the display can function to temporarily view and manipulate the screen of the portable device it is in communication with," says the paper.

"This might be desirable when the portable electronic device is stored in an inconvenient location such as a cargo pocket, or the bottom of a backpack.

"A larger display is also more desirable for map viewing... as a traveller or explorer can easily reference the information with a flick of the wrist while exploring."

Recharge worries

ABI Research notes that several companies already sell smart watches - such as Fossil, Pebble and Sony - while others (including Samsung and Martian) are known to be working on such products,

For the time being, however, it says the sector is dominated instead by activity trackers - such as Nike's Fuelband and the Garmin Forerunner - which account for an estimated 61% of the wearable tech market.

Some of these devices do tell the time, but they only offer limited functionality beyond monitoring exercise or the owner's sleep pattern.

The consultants instead suggest a much wider range of uses giving the example of linking the watch to a home automation system so that "a quick shake of your wrist can turn off/on room lights".

The idea of a smartwatch has been around for years - but the firm says technology only recently caught up with our imagination.

"Moore's law has driven silicon to the point where it's small enough and powerful enough to drive applications that mean things to consumers," ABI's chief research officer, Stuart Carlaw, told the BBC.

"Bluetooth Smart has also brought us high-bandwidth, low-energy connectivity at a less than a dollar a chip and takes up little space while offering robust performance.

"But one note of caution is that when we look at wearable technologies the use of power becomes an issue. You don't want to have to be plugging in four or five products a night to recharge - energy harvesting or wireless recharging technologies are going to become incredibly important."

Apple's patent confirms the company is aware of the problem.

It suggests harvesting energy from the movement of the user's arms and only coming out of standby mode when a sensor detects the device has been rotated to face a certain way.

It adds that the use of an AMOLED (active matrix light emitting diode) display would also help since it can allow individual pixels to be turned off, allowing the watch to only activate the parts which are facing the owner's eyes.

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Samsung faces disability setback

22 February 2013 Last updated at 13:34 ET By Leo Kelion Technology reporter

Samsung has suffered a setback in its effort to win an iPhone ban based on a function making its software accessible to blind people.

The South Korean firm had sought an injunction in a German court arguing Apple's VoiceOver screen-access facility infringed one of its patents.

However, the judge has ordered the case to be suspended pending another ruling that could invalidate Samsung's claim.

Disability campaigners had expressed concern about the case.

Apple's VoiceOver function is used by blind and partially-sighted people to hear a description of what the iPhone is showing by touching its screen.

The software covers text and icons including audio descriptions of the battery level and network signal. It also allows the phones to be operated via Braille-based add-ons.

Samsung had argued that Apple had failed to licence a patent it owned which describes pressing a button to make a handset describe its display. The basis for this was that VoiceOver could be switched on by triple-clicking the iPhone's home button.

Apple declined to comment.

A statement from Samsung said: "For decades, we have heavily invested in pioneering the development of technological innovations in the mobile industry, which have been constantly reflected in our products.

"We continue to believe that Apple has infringed our patented mobile technologies, and we will continue to take the measures necessary to protect our intellectual property rights."

'Regrettable in the extreme'

Patent consultant Florian Muller, who was first to report the Mannheim Court's decision, questioned Samsung's tactics.

"If Samsung had only requested monetary compensation in this action, it would have made a much better choice than by trying to achieve, through the pursuit of an injunction, the deactivation or (more realistically) degradation of the voiceover functionality Apple provides to its German customers," he wrote on his blog.

The British Computer Association of the Blind said it was worried such an important feature might be threatened.

"A lack of access to information is arguably the biggest potential barrier to inclusion in society for blind and partially-sighted people," a spokesman told the BBC.

"If something as important as access to telephone technology had been blocked by the actions of one company over another the consequences for blind people everywhere would be regrettable in the extreme."

The Wall Street Journal's AllThingsD tech site was more damning.

"Leaving aside the ethics of asserting a patent against a feature designed to help the blind, this is unwise," wrote John Paczkowski.

"It's the PR equivalent of punching yourself in the face. Samsung has now identified itself as a company willing to accept the loss of accessibility for the vision-impaired as collateral damage in its battle with Apple."

Apple and Samsung have fought a number of patent cases against each other in courts across the world.

The biggest award involved a US jury ordering Samsung to pay Apple $1.05bn (£688m) in damages. The judge in the case later rejected Apple's call for the sum to be increased and a sales ban on some Samsung handsets.

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Hackers attack Microsoft computers

23 February 2013 Last updated at 00:15 ET

Microsoft has become the latest US technology company to confirm that it has been targeted by computer hackers.

In a blog post, Microsoft announced that "a small number" of its computers had recently been deliberately infected with malicious software.

The firm said it found no evidence that any customer data had been accessed, but an investigation is continuing.

On Tuesday Apple said its computers were attacked by the same hackers who targeted Facebook a week earlier.

At the time, Facebook said it had traced a cyber attack back to China which had infiltrated employees' laptops.

In Friday's blog post, Microsoft spokesman Matt Thomlinson said: "This type of cyberattack is no surprise to Microsoft and other companies that must grapple with determined and persistent adversaries."

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Apple drops shares plan after ruling

24 February 2013 Last updated at 06:27 ET

Apple has dropped a planned vote of shareholders after a US judge blocked the move in an ongoing spat over what to do with the tech giant's huge cash pile.

The judge backed a lawsuit by activist shareholder David Einhorn, who wants Apple to return more cash to shareholders.

Apple boss Tim Cook had called the lawsuit a "silly sideshow" but has complied with the judge's ruling.

The firm has $137bn (£90bn) in cash.

This is despite having already repaid $10bn via dividends and share buybacks.

Following the preliminary ruling by US District Judge Richard Sullivan in New York, Apple has dropped plans to ask shareholders to vote on whether to abolish a contractual right that the company currently enjoys to issue such preference shares without limit.

'Disappointed'

Apple had bundled the move, together with several other changes to the way in which the company is organised, into a single voting proposition for shareholders - something that Mr Einhorn said is illegal and the judge agreed.

"We are disappointed with the court's ruling," Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said. "[That proposal] is part of our efforts to further enhance corporate governance and serve our shareholders' best interests."

Mr Einhorn objects to the fact that a significant percentage of his investment in Apple shares in effect sits idle, invested in cash that pays very little return and has accused Apple of a "Depression-era mentality".

He wants Apple to issue perpetual preference shares to existing shareholders. These are a special type of share that pay a regular flat dividend in perpetuity, and which receive their payment in preference to the dividends paid out on ordinary shares.

Apple has said that it is keeping hold of the cash so that it is ready to make a major acquisition as and when the opportunity arises.

Apple has built up huge cash reserves by making extremely profitable products like the iPhone, iPad and the iPod.

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Samsung and Huawei show off devices

24 February 2013 Last updated at 10:41 ET

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Huawei describes its Android-powered Ascend P2 as the world's "fastest" smartphone

A fresh tablet from Samsung and a new Android handset from Huawei have been announced at the start of the Mobile World Congress (MWC).

About 1,500 exhibitors are taking part at the annual event in Barcelona.

Samsung's tablet features an 8in (20.3cm) screen with a resolution of 189 pixels per inch (ppi) making it slightly bigger and more detailed than Apple's bestselling iPad Mini.

Huawei's Ascend P2 has a 4.7in screen with 315ppi, and a 13 megapixel camera.

The Chinese firm said it also featured a facility called Magic Touch, which allowed it to be used while wearing gloves - similar to Nokia's Lumia 920.

Tablet wars

Samsung's Galaxy Note 8.0 is being promoted as a device on which users can multi-task - running two apps in split-screen mode - and can act as alternative to "traditional pen and paper" thanks to its included stylus, the S Pen.

The South Korean firm adds that it is light enough to be held by one hand, and can also be used to make phone calls.

According to the research firm IDC, Samsung was the world's most successful smart device manufacturer in the October-to-December period, accounting for 21.2% of all shipments.

However, that position was secured in large part due to its smartphones, and IDC noted that in the tablet sector Samsung came in second with a 15.1% market share compared to Apple's 43.6%.

"The Note 8 marks Samsung's relentless charge to grab a slice of the tablet market from Apple, but also to defend itself from the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7," Ben Wood, head of research at CCS Insight, told the BBC.

"I think there's a diminishing window of opportunity because Amazon and Google are playing by different rules - they are effectively willing to sell their hardware virtually at cost and then make money through content sales, whereas Samsung is a hardware manufacturer selling something for a margin.

"It's very difficult for consumers to tell the difference between these products - but what does make Samsung stand out is the fact they are prepared to carpet bomb marketing with an eye-watering budget, which effectively marginalises some of the other companies trying to get into the tablet space."

The Galaxy Note 8.0 is being made available in Europe, South Korea, China and a limited number of other countries in the April-to-June period.

Chinese ambition

Huawei describes its Android-powered Ascend P2 as the world's "fastest" smartphone thanks to it being the first to include an LTE Cat 4 chip which - in theory - allows 4G download speeds of up to 150 megabits per second,

The device also includes an NFC (near field communication) chip, allowing it to support wireless payments, and is relatively slim measuring 8.4mm (0.33in) thick,

However, its screen is lower resolution than recent models from LG, HTC and Nokia, and can display 720p HD video rather than 1080p output. But this may help it last longer between recharges, and the device also features a larger than average 2420 mAh battery.

According to IDC, Huawei accounted for 10.8 million smartphone shipments in the fourth quarter, making it the world's third-biggest vendor.

However, it could still only claim a 4.9% market share since Apple and Samsung dominated the sector - something the Chinese firm itself acknowledged describing itself as a "brand in the making" at its Barcelona launch,

"Because this is a very aggressively-priced LTE phone, Huawei have a good chance of getting it into operator portfolios for 2013," said Mr Wood.

"Brand awareness and credibility remain a challenge for Huawei. But this is a company that will never give up.

Continue reading the main story

Sunday:

Mozilla: 1800 local time (1700 GMT)

Monday:

Nokia: 0820 local time (0730 GMT)

Sony: 0845 local time (0830 GMT)

Ford: 1000 local time (0900 GMT)

Asus: 1300 local time (1200 GMT)

ZTE: 1600 local time (1500 GMT)

Visa: 1630 local time (1530 GMT)

"Huawei is determined to make inroads into the mobile phone market, though the competitive intensity of this segment means they will need to spend a lot of money to succeed."

Huawei said the phone was already confirmed to go on sale in France in June, and should launch elsewhere around the globe around the same time.

MWC's competition

Other early MWC announcements include:

• A 16 gigabyte version of Acer's budget Iconia B1 tablet.
• The Samsung HomeSync - a 1 terabyte hard disk designed to allow families to share content between their Samsung devices and display it on their television.
• A marketing campaign from Asus - the maker of the Google Nexus 7 - suggesting it will be the latest to launch a tablet that can also make calls at its event on Monday.

In past year's Sony Ericsson also held a major press conference on the Sunday ahead of Monday's official start to MWC.

But the business - which is now controlled in whole by Sony - has opted for a smaller event on Monday this year.

The move reflects it decision to launch its flagship Xperia Z phone earlier in the year at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

Other firms have also preferred to hold one-off events, such as Blackberry with its Z10 and Q10 unveiling in New York last month.

It is also notable that Samsung has chosen to hold off updating its key Galaxy S handset until later in the year. It unveiled the Galaxy S2 at MWC in 2011.

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Firefox smartphone partners revealed

24 February 2013 Last updated at 12:02 ET By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter

The not-for-profit organisation behind the Firefox web browser has announced handsets based on its operating system for mobile phones.

In a press conference ahead of Mobile World Congress, Mozilla said that 18 operators including Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica, were signed up.

The mobiles will go head to head with established software from Apple and Google's Android division.

Mozilla described the Firefox OS as an "open alternative".

Firefox phones are likely to be sold first in the developing world and Eastern Europe and will be at the cheaper end of the smartphone market, according to Jay Sullivan, vice president of products at Mozilla.

He said manufacturers LG, ZTE, Huawei and TCL had all committed to building devices, with more firms "to follow".

The platform is based on the HTML5 web programming language which Mr Sullivan says gave it an advantage over Apple and Android.

"The Firefox marketplace is web-based and will allow a device to do things differently," he told the BBC.

"If someone searches for content it will show any apps that have that content. The web can be searched, indexed and crawled in ways native apps cannot,"

"Developers are busy and don't have time to learn a new programming language. We believe that the only remaining eco-system is the web and there are more developers for the web than for any other platform in the world."

At the beginning of the year, Mozilla revealed a partnership with Spanish firm Geeksphone, with handsets made available to developers.

Features copied

Analysts believe Mozilla faces an uphill struggle to be anything other than a niche player in the smartphone market.

"A Firefox phone may be slightly cheaper than an Android one but the latter has access to Google services and 700,000 apps," said Nick Dillon, an analyst with research firm Ovum.

For him this year's Mobile World Congress will be all about the "third eco-system."

"We have several players including Jolla Mobile and Ubuntu. There are a lot of new entrants all vying for that third place," he said.

Ovum also warned that the Firefox operating system was "slow and buggy" in its current state adding that it could not "hide behind price as a justification for poor performance" when Samsung and Nokia had their own budget devices on the market.

Mr Sullivan compared Mozilla's foray into mobile as similar to its first steps in the desktop world with its browser.

"When we got to 10% market share people started listening to us," he said.

"We had a seat at the table, people started copying our features."

The full list of operators signing up to the Firefox OS is: America Movil, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, Hutchison Three Group, KDDI, KT, MegaFon, Qtel, SingTel, Smart, Sprint, Telecom Italia Group, Telefonica, Telenor, TMN and VimpelCom.

The organisation said the first countries to get the Firefox handsets would be Brazil, Colombia, Hungary, Mexico, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Spain and Venezuela.

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Data 'to overtake voice' by 2018

24 February 2013 Last updated at 22:24 ET

Mobile operators will make more money from data than from voice by 2018, according to the GSMA.

The organisation - which represents the mobile industry - said that the surge in connected devices and the growth of machine-to-machine communications were creating huge demand.

In a report it lays out some of the ways that mobile is transforming lives, particularly in the developing world.

Mobile health services could help save one million lives in Africa, it said.

The five-year forecasts were released to coincide with Mobile World Congress - the association's annual tech event in Barcelona.

Health and learning

The fight against deadly diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and the ongoing fight against HIV will increasingly be helped by the greater use of mobile connectivity, according to the report.

Some 240 tonnes of food spoils during transit and in storage every year, but using mobile to track trucks and monitor the temperature of storage facilities could save enough food to feed 40 million people in 2017 - equivalent to the entire population of Kenya - it said.

Meanwhile, the use of mobile handsets, e-readers and tablets could put 1.8 million more children in education by 2017, it suggested.

"Mobile data is not just a commodity, it is becoming the lifeblood of our daily lives, society and economy, with more and more connected people and things," said Michael O'Hara, chief marketing officer at GSMA.

The association predicted that the US and UK would see data revenues exceeding voice by 2014.

Argentina would get there even earlier, it said, reaching the milestone in 2013, while Kenya - one of Africa's most connected countries - would hit the target in 2016.

It is not just the developing world that will benefit. It predicted that mobile health services would shave $400bn (£265m) off the OECD countries' annual healthcare bill by 2017.

It added that connected cars could save one in nine lives through emergency calling services and, smart metering could cut carbon emissions by 27 million tonnes - the equivalent of planting 1.2 billion trees.

GSMA's members benefit from it publicising the benefits of their creations.

However, the wider mobile phone industry has also faced criticism in the past about pollution caused by toxic substances which can leak from some devices if they are dumped in landfill sites, and evidence that some manufacturers have employed underage workers.

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Mobile World: Barcelona phone fest

25 February 2013 Last updated at 04:01 ET

The BBC tech team will be providing frequent updates to this page throughout Barcelona's Mobile World Congress to keep you up to date with developments.

The BBC's Technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones tweets: "Whatever question you throw at him Nokia's Stephen Elop is always the most amiable of tech CEOs."

There has been a lot of interest around Nokia's newly announced £13 phone, its cheaper Lumia smartphones and the company's strategy going forward. See the full interview below.

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Nokia's Stephen Elop says the Lumia can boost the company into third place in the smartphone market

Last year MWC created a mocked-up house full of mobile technology that can help around the home. This year it has gone one step further with a connected city. Dougal Shaw has visited and sent this Tout video.

Here he explains what the city is all about:

A section of Mobile World Congress has been devoted to the 'Connected City' this year, where companies can showcase how smart, wireless tech can have a direct impact on our day to day lives.

AT&T is displaying tech for the home, where an app combined with sensors in various appliances, allows you to control your fridge, house temperature, and lighting from afar - and even feed your pet.

There are also bikes which are fully 'online', allowing for the monitoring of everything from pedal power to blood glucose levels.

And there is a car from Volvo with its own app store, allowing - the company says - your smartphone to be integrated into the car's entertainment and travel information system in a safe way.

Mobile World Congress is not just about handsets, it is also about the networks they run on and this year everyone is going to be talking about the reality of living with 4G.

The UK was somewhat late to the 4G party, compared to other European nations, but later today Olaf Swantee, chief executive of EE will take to the stage to talk about how his firm is finding the new technology.

He will reveal that over a quarter of EE's 4G traffic comes from video - 11% of that from YouTube usage - as consumers realise the benefits of a fast, reliable connection.

EE faces competition soon as the other main UK operators roll out their own 4G networks. There is also likely to be a price war with Three already saying it will charge no premium for its own next-generation offering.

To date, EE has been somewhat coy about the number of subscribers making the switch but Mr Swantee will reveal that the firm has seen sales growth of 10% every week since launching in November.

Interestingly businesses are finding 4G a must-have technology - EE has seen over 1,000 corporations making the switch.

Mr Swantee will also talk up the the way new networks are changing devices, with bigger handsets that make it easier to watch movies and view other video content proving popular.

4G is helping to herald " a golden age of mobile", he will conclude.

The news from Barcelona is coming thick and fast although not all of it is happening on the ground.

Samsung has chosen to launch its new Galaxy S smartphone on March 14 in New York, after apparently being bombarded with requests from US mobile carriers to launch it on American soil.

Looking to markets even further afield, BlackBerry launched it first BlackBerry 10 smartphone in India at a price of 43,490 rupees ($800; £528) while Nokia has refocused on the basic handset market, with a 15 euro (£13) phone.

The Nokia 105, which will go on sale later this quarter, is the successor to the 1280, which sold more than 100 million units, according to the company.

It also revealed lower priced versions of its Lumia handsets.

It is still going to be a tough job for Nokia to catch up with rivals Apple and Google though, think analysts.

"Nokia has only sold 14 million Lumia devices so far - not enough to establish Windows Phone 8 as the third ecosystem," said Forrester analyst Thomas Husson.

"More challenging for Nokia is to capture high-end market share - in the light of the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy S4 announcement. The two new Lumia devices coupled with the amazingly affordable Nokia 105 device however highlight the massive growth to be expected in emerging markets and the opportunity to target the second wave of smartphone owners," he added.

Rory Cellan-Jones took a look at some of the cheaper Lumias. Watch his Tout video here

Rory Cellan-Jones and video journalist Dougal Shaw are heading down to Mobile World Congress to find out how smart cities will help to power the cities of the future. Take a look at the venue before the crowds descend in Dougal's Tout video.

The GSMA - organisers of MWC - predicts mobile operator data revenues will overtake voice revenues globally by 2018. It suggests health-related apps will be one of the biggest draws - and the software could end up saving hundreds of billions of pounds worth of medical costs.

Mozilla's new mobile operating system gets off to a strong start with news that it has secured 18 mobile operator partners and nine launch markets. ZTE, LG and Huawei are among those on board.

Tony Cripps, principal device analyst at Ovum, is impressed but warns of problems ahead.

"That is a huge achievement for what, in fairness, has looked like an underdog among the plethora of alternative software platforms currently vying to power the so-called 'third ecosystem'," he writes.

"Windows Phone, Blackberry 10, and Tizen all look like better bets on the surface. As such, the Mozilla Foundation and its early sponsors, especially Telefonica, deserve considerable credit.

"The real acid test for Firefox OS and its long-term prospects is the quality of the software itself and the user and developer experiences that it fosters. However, it will be difficult to say whether it meets those needs sufficiently until we have seen retail devices. What is clear from the Firefox OS demonstration handsets that we have seen was that they are still some way from being market ready, being both slow and buggy."

Richard Taylor, editor of Click, has been taking a look at Firefox OS and you can see his Tout video here

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Chinese company Huawei claims its new product is "the world's fastest smartphone"

Huawei unveils its latest handset, the Ascend P2. The 4.7in device is said to be the "world's fastest" thanks to a new kind of 4G chip - but has a smaller screen than the D2 which the Chinese firm unveiled at the Las Vegas CES tech convention in January.

The firm - which some analysts say is now the world's third biggest smartphone vendor - secures a large turnout for its Barcelona news conference at the Casa Llotje de Mar, a former stock exchange. It also unveils its new marketing campaign which will use "make it possible" as its slogan.

View Rory's Tout video here

Read Rory's blog on who may win the much-coveted third spot behind Apple and Android

Rory tweets he's in town.

Asus's viral marketing campaign is causing a stir ahead of its announcement on Monday.

The campaign takes Barcelona's famous statue of Christopher Columbus and makes it appear he is talking into a large phone/tablet.

Tech sites are convinced this heralds the unveiling of the firm's Intel-powered FonePad, which Taiwan's Digitimes news site has already said will launch at MWC.

Samsung kicks off the Mobile World Congress news via a pair of press releases rather than an event. They detail news of the Galaxy Note 8.0 featuring an 8in (20.3cm) screen.

An email from Samsung highlights that it launched a tablet with a 7in screen in 2010 and claims its new device will "reignite the mid-size tablet category". The move is presumably designed to help it compete against Apple's iPad Mini - which has a 7.9in screen - which has proved more popular.

The BBC's Mobile World Congress coverage is under way with a preview by Jane Wakefield and a look at how big phones can get before you start suffering from wrist ache.

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How big is your phone?

We'll be running this blog as well as a special video section on the Technology page throughout the event.

Our technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones, will be supported on the ground in Barcelona by Dougal Shaw, Harriet Noble and Neil Drake as well as the Click team, while the regular tech squad will pull all the other snippets of news together from London.

You can also follow Rory and Dougal's coverage at the BBC Tech twitter page and our Tout channel.

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