After 16 hours on feet, endless industry squawking and endless red Rioja, Congress peeps need multiple tablets just to keep going. This year it wasn’t just Aspirin Tablets that adorned every exhibitor’s right hand; it was mobile web tablets in multiple incarnations from everywhere. Most of them, it must be said, were cheap iPAD and Galaxy lookalikes, their fate yet unknown (and as we all know, who really risks taking cheap tablets from unknown sources to clear real headaches?)
In the UK, to buy something “on HP” means to buy it on Hire Purchase, which is a cheeky mnemonic for buying something on a loan contract with high interest rates. In such deals, the vendor always comes out on top and the poor consumer always pays too much. At MWC, the vultures permanently surrounded a Palm WebOS tablet now available on HP with equally high interest levels. Time will tell whether HP is the winner here as well and whether again it is at the expense of the mobile consumer.
Over on Android green play area, the green Droid was in full swing. Sitting at the Android bar, I wondered whether the Gingerbread, Honeycomb and Donut-flavored freebie smoothies were designed to emanate an impression of smooth transitions between Android operating systems. Or was it just because no one will drink green slime coloured drinks?
Next up for me was the Samsung Inter-galactic Mega Booth. 100 female blue and white coloured troopers in short skirts and 100 males in black suits did nothing for sexual equality but the products do go from strength to strength. But just don’t ask for a product manager, they hide behind the Galactic air locks and it is hard to converse with them through the space suits.
Onward to App Hall 7 which now houses RIM (Blackberry) and their “Professional” grade tablet. Asked why it is specially marked out as “Professional”, an eloquent staffer replied that it was because the data it exchanged with a Blackberry server was encrypted for high-levels of security. Fair enough I thought, but then why call it PLAYbook?
And finally a word on the Yahoo MWC announcement, an initiative aimed at, surprise surprise, the tablets market. Dubbed “Livestand,” it has some similarities to our very own My Taptu, something not lost on reporter Ingrid Lunden over at mocoNews. I’m sure this has great potential, dear Yahoo, but announcing “Livestand” on Wednesday? After three late nights, Mobile World Congress and “Livestand” don’t sit well together – that morning most of the stands were dead. 
