Now that CTIA 2009 has come and gone we wanted to take a step back and reflect on what was most definitely a show unlike any CTIA in recent years. It was great to hit the floor and catch up with a bunch of companies to talk tech of course, but anyone in attendance will tell you the show was slow. Very slow. Painfully slow. Hell, even Billy Crystal didn’t bother to show up. An interesting though unofficial note: The vendor count was up this year — significantly — or so we were told. Attendance was way down however, as was the amount of newsworthy announcements from the big boys. Blame it on the economy if it helps, but the number of new (and potentially significant) handset announcements from big manufacturers at the show can be counted on one hand. With three fingers.
Luckily there’s already a light at the end of the tunnel as this Summer we’ll definitely see things pick up. Palm will finally let people touch the Pre — and maybe even buy it. The BlackBerry 9630 will be out and we’ll be hitting you with info about the next up and coming handsets from RIM. HTC will have released the Touch Pro2 and the Touch Diamond2. Apple will be dropping a new iPhone or two… Things will be exciting again and hopefully enough momentum will be generated to help the industry as a whole begin to rebound. In the meantime, like the guy in front of us at Al Gore’s keynote, we’ll all be doing our best not to fall asleep.
