Today Research In Motion announced the new "Blackberry Curve" which is the first of the new 8300 series phones I've been hearing about and definitely waiting for. AT&T (Cingular) was confirmed as one of several carriers who will offer the new phone and as an AT&T customer I'm certainly happy about that. However, I'm hoping I'll be able to get one of the more advanced models in the series. The Curve as announced today is just the lowest end model, lacking both the WiFi and GPS capabilities expected of other models in the line. (Word on the street is that the 8320 will add WiFi, and the 83XX will offer both WiFi and on-board GPS.)

I've seen indications that T-Mobile will offer the 8320, which is consistent with their rumored plans to launch several phones later this summer with WiFi, along with a service for making voice calls via WiFi hotspots.

I'll keep my figers crossed that AT&T will offer at least the 8320, and with any luck the 83XX. None of today's press from RIM or AT&T mentioned an expected availability date for the 8300, so I'll just keep poking around on the web until the 8300 shows up in a nearby AT&T (Cingular) store and I can go check one out first hand...

This week I attended the 3GSM World Congress (usually just called "3GSM") in Barcelona, Spain. 3GSM bills itself as "the most important gathering for the mobile industry" and it's pretty hard to argue with that. Most of my time was spent meeting with partners, customers, potential partners, and potential customers, but I did have some time to explore the exhibit halls. That exploration was constrained to be cursory as the exhibits covered four floors in three large and separate buildings and housed several hundred vendors. Even if I had made it a full time job for the three days I was there I could hardly have made a thorough investigation. However, zooming through quickly does offer an opportunity to do some visual integration of what's on display and from that I extracted a few observations to share.

First and foremost, I'd say the Age of Entertainment is upon us thanks to a happy convergence of relatively recent progress on three fronts. Handset manufactures are now producing mobile phones with sufficient multimedia capabiliites and on-board storage that they can run engaging games, receive captivating video streams, and play CD-quality music. Our cellular networks now have the bandwidth to drive that volume of information to devices at a price point that people will find acceptible. And there's enough motivation among game, video, and music creators to begin capitalizing on the opportunity by creating content well suited for delivery and consumption by mobile consumers. Better still, it's a win-win-win-win situation for everyone involved. Device manufacturers offer these features as enticements to trade in last year's cell phone, carriers thrill in the increased consumption of billable connect minutes, content providers have sufficient markets to generate positive return on their creative investment, and humans in general have the ability to be truly and affordably entertained any time, anywhere.

It seems to me the key concept here is "entertainment". It's what binds all these communities together and creates the ecosystem that can sustain them. Yes, there are some other active and interesting markets - one oft-cited example being mobile enterprise applications such as corporate email, group scheduling, and document sharing - but I think the practical maximum demand in that market pales in comparison to entertainment.

3GSM was awash in folks offering to contribute to the entertainment ecosystem. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of new and speculative device manufactures. Little companies were everywhere offering interesting alternatives to the traditional phone vendors, in some cases banding together to form groups around common platforms like Linux. And the established heavy hitters weren't resting on their planet-sized laurels either. Sony Ericsson seems to have become a veritable volcano of devices, erupting new ones almost continuously. Models that premiered last November are now being swept aside by new versions both major and minor, with obvious emphasis on combining phone, digital camera, music player, and TV. I had the pleasure of borrowing a Sony W900i (new at Thanksgiving but now surpassed) for my time at 3GSM. It has a high quality 240x320 display with powerful on-board graphics controller, 2 megapixel camera, built in music player with a separate control panel spliced into the headset cable, 470Mb of storage for music & media, Bluetooth, Java ME support, Memory Stick slot for accessing all your media, and it still fit comfortably in my pocket.

The producer end of the ecosystem was also present in force. Most of them were concentrated in a special "Content Zone", largely because a thriving subsegment is populated by "adult entertainment" and let's just say their booths were not the kind of thing you wanted people to accidentally wander into. Games were everywhere. Serialized content was hot as well, with many companies specializing in animated episodic entertainment built around characters like "Cat Bastard" and "Suicidal Squirrels". (Think of it as if new "Itchy and Scratchy" cartoons were pushed out to your phone every two weeks.). Vendors specialize in helping content creators package their media so as to reach the largest possible range of devices and carriers, and extend thriving mainstream developer tools like NetBeans to serve the mobile market.

Carriers get help too, in the form of products like Sun's Content Delivery Server, which provide powerful platforms for getting all that content out to folks and making possible marketing campaigns that promote new services and reward consumers for purchases or plan upgrades. Carriers are going to need as much of this kind of technology as they can get as we will soon reach the point where success will depend on ulitmate flexibility in creating offers and linking titles at the peak of their bursts of fame so as to drive more consumption.

There came a time in the evolution of the Internet where the matra became "Content is King". For the mobile marketplace I think the mantra is "Entertainment is King".

A few other quick observations in closing:

• I was quite pleased to see significant activity in providing mobile mapping services to cell phones, and innovation in GPS chip sets so our phones can be GPS receivers. There are some powerful, as yet untapped business models lurking in the map-enabled realm.
• I found the most stunning technology in an unassuming glass case in the far rear corner of the second floor of Hall 2. Lots of great innovations had been assembled for display by Ken Blakeslee of WebMobility Ventures, but I was most impressed by 1) The iTech laser beam keyboard, a small bluetooth device that projects a laser outline on any flat surface and allows you to enter text by typing onto the projection, 2) Polymer Vision's Readius rollable display device, and 3) MicroEmissive Displays' "eyscreen" devices which provide LED televisions smaller than a dime.

Barcelona was a great host city, and I look forward to attending 3GSM there next February. The tapas and paella were grand and I was impressed by the locally-brewed Estrella Damm beer. If I plan next year's trip better I'll arrange more time to sightsee so I can tour more of the astonishing Sacrada Familia and explore the musems in Monjuic Park.