July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

“Born mobile” is the overarching theme Qualcomm has been promoting over the past few weeks, and tonight the company’s chief executive Paul Jacobs finally had a chance to elaborate on that idea at the CES opening keynote in Las Vegas.

But it wasn’t too long into Jacobs’ keynote before Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer bounded onto the stage, with his typical exuberance. It was a sort of passing of the torch, since Ballmer handled the CES opening keynote for the past few years. Microsoft announced last year that it would no longer hold a major presence at CES, and that included stepping back from the keynote.

Ballmer showed off new Windows 8-powered computers relying on Qualcomm processors, like the Samsung Ativ and a Dell XPS notebook. He also showed off the Lumia 920 and HTC Windows Phone 8X smartphones.

Mostly, Ballmer lent an air of legitimacy and energy to Jacobs’ keynote, which got off to a slow start thanks to a loud Gangnam Style intro and was followed up by bad actors pretending to be mobile-empowered teens.

Later, Jacobs shared details on Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 800 series of processors, which promise to support wireless data speeds up to 150 Mbps.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google chairman Eric Schmidt’s Mobile World Congress keynotes have always been interesting, but his keynote yesterday just about floored me as he put on his futurist hat with complete sincerity.

It’s not only a good watch, it’s required viewing.

Now you can check it out for yourself, as Google has just uploaded the entire keynote to YouTube. Skip past the opening Android on Chrome demonstration (though it’s still cool), and you’ll see Schmidt discuss the digital divide, how technology will fundamentally shape society in the future, and how tiny robots will let us experience remote events in holographic 3D.

It’s also worth watching for choice quotes like this: “Computer science is more than writing code and coding is more than writing programs… Developers are the engineers of human freedom.”

VentureBeat is holding its second annual Mobile Summit this April 2-3 in Sausalito, Calif. The invitation-only event will debate the five key business and technology challenges facing the mobile industry today, and participants — 180 mobile executives, investors, and policymakers — will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of the mobile industry. You can find out more at our Mobile Summit site.