The CTIA 2009 spring event was one mobile industry show where mobile devices did not take center stage.  Last week’s event was driven by two main themes:  Mobile applications and  long-term evolution (LTE).   In addition to the iPhone AppStore, we now have Microsoft’s Windows Mobile Marketplace and Research In Motion’s Blackberry App World.  Multitudes of vendors demonstrated their streaming video, GPS/LBS or mobile social networking solutions  - perhaps the next investment bubble to burst.  The big question is: Will carriers get a piece of the application action in the mobile world,or will they revert to being dumb pipes as they basically have with the Internet?

Microsoft and RIM seem more intent to include the carriers as part of the value chain.  After all, application success depends to a large extent on the quality of the network, not just the handset. Mobile carriers are spending billions over the half decade to migrate networks to support high-speed broadband applications.  Cisco estimates that 65% of the traffic in mobile networks by 2013 will be composed of video.  Hence, the drive to promote and deploy LTE, which will ostensibly provide a 100 Mb connection to each mobile device in the network.

LTE product developments and carrier deployments are speeding along much faster than 3G developments did in  previous years.  Infrastructure vendors such as Motorola and Nokia Siemens Networks are adamant that their LTE technology is ready now, and an outstanding demo “drive” by Motorola provided convincing evidence.  However, the consensus is that consumers will not be able to take advantage of any LTE-based 4G infrastructure until mid-2010.  That’s when a handful of mobile LTE devices will be available, and 4G infrastructure will be in place in some major metros.   Handset vendors were very candid about their progress in obtaining LTE-compatible chipsets. It’s still early days, and there will be the usual hiccups associated with new technology.

Overall, this year’s CTIA spring event belied any notion of an economic recession.  Compared to the show I attended in 2008, there appeared to be a similar quantity of attendees and even more excitement continuing to build around mobile broadband.