Well, the first official day of CTIA is over, and we've canvassed a fair section of the show floor. Most of what I saw on the show floor was evolutionary, there isn't anything that really blew my mind. That said, there are still gems on the floor, it just takes a while to dig them out. I've put up a few of these gems in Treocentral's Flickr photostream, and it will of course be updated again tomorrow.
We started the day at the keynote, which I felt was disjointed; Ed Zander of Motorola cancelled his keynote at the last minute; the stage was filled with mini-keynotes from AT&T's CEO, Blackberry's CEO, and the head of Microsoft's Mobile and Embedded Devices division. They were mostly marketing pitches and crowing about their vast array of 3rd party applications.
The Palm extra battery charger we saw at last night's MobileFocus event is apparently a prototype, as were the orange and white transparent Palm Cradle kits. The extra battery charger from Palm will probably be out sooner or later; a product that slick isn't likely to remain hidden for long. With regards to the transparent cradles, I've not heard one way or another whether they will be sold. All of the car kits mentioned yesterday, of course, are officially announced. It's worth noting that the GPS cradle that uses the serial connection does not yet work with the Treo 750; a patch for that functionality is expected later.
With regards to the Palm energy drink below, Palm was unavailable for comment as of press time.
We had a chance to ask a Blackberry representative about the smartphone statistics in Canada and they were dismissive of Canalys's numbers, saying they don't know where some analysts get their numbers. We also had a lengthy chat with Jon Von Tetzchner, the CEO of Opera of Opera browser fame, and we'll be reporting on that in our podcast this coming Monday.
The gist of the day is, there are some very cool things going on at CTIA. Tomorrow's article will include a software roundup with blurbs about some of the neater software offerings that we've seen around the floor. For more reading, there's some excellent Windows Mobile-focused coverage by Dieter Bohn over at wmexperts.com: a roundup of the day's events and of course, you may also want to check out Dieter's gadget love from yesterday.
