Fewer but smarter mobile phones

Handsets such as Nokia E75 are catching up laptops in functionality

The economic downturn has been a big theme at this year's forum dedicated to the mobile phone industry. Operators are fighting hard to attract new customers and to hold on to existing ones, as David Reid found out.

The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona offers companies the opportunity to show off the latest in mobile technology.

But the message from the conference this year is that mobile phones, when used smartly, can actually help users cut costs.

According to Jay Seaton from mobile messaging company Airwide, mobile usage is rising.

"In tough economic times many people are making a choice to abandon their fixed line and just rely on their mobile," he said.

"Advanced services are also going to increase traffic, as operators move people to flat rate pricing," he added.

Bigger returns

Advanced services on handsets include picture and music downloads, video calling and mobile TV.

These applications are expected to earn industry players bigger returns, despite their own predictions that fewer devices will be sold this year.

Many handsets are now coming packed with services and applications that are taking them closer to laptops in functionality.

Mr Babaian from Skype said saving money is a priority for customers

For example, Nokia's E75 can do e-mail, has a qwerty keyboard, can handle almost any document from your PC, and it comes with GPS and pre-loaded maps.

Ilari Nurmi from Nokia said mobile phones enable businessmen like him to be productive even while travelling.

"With the latest products you're able to view Powerpoints, you're able to view Word documents, Excel sheets, PDF files and also edit them on the fly," he explained.

Free phone calls

But phone calls made internationally are still expensive, so Skype has teamed up with Nokia to offer internet calls on the move.

Nicholas Babaian from Skype said its service is being integrated into the address book of Nokia devices.

"So if you have an internet connection it can be 3G wherever you are, or over wi-fi, you can find your Skype friends in your address book and click on them.

"And you can make a phone call just as you would a regular Skype phone call, " he said.

Mr Babaian added that saving money on mobile phone bills is "the number one thing people want right now".

"And being able to make free phone calls using the internet is hugely important to them," he said.

Mobile phone provider O2 has also come up with a money-saving plan by inviting customers to test new services on its developer platform O2 Litmus.

The idea is to get people to roadtest applications and services before the expense of launching them on the market.