BARCELONA, Spain — When Michael Abbott took the job as chief executive of mobile payments venture Isis, his mother demanded that he make the service easy enough for her to use. After giving it a go during last year’s trials, she put her stamp of approval on the service, Abbott said during his keynote address …

BARCELONA, Spain — Motorola Mobility may be a lame duck waiting for Lenovo to take the reins, but that doesn’t mean it can’t make a little noise. Motorola, for now still a unit of Google, said Tuesday that it will build a smartwatch for later this year. The product will “solve real user problems,” will be treated more like an …

BARCELONA, Spain — Quixey thinks it can do mobile search better. The Mountain View, Calif., startup on Tuesday showed off the capability to run mobile searches and bring up results straight from apps — including apps that aren’t even on the phone. The company believes these kinds of deeper searches will make it a go-to tool on smartphones. For example, …

BARCELONA, Spain — Facebook and Ericsson are looking to spur the connection of the next five billion Internet users. The companies said on Monday at the Mobile World Congress trade show that they would be building an “Innovation Lab” at Facebook’s Menlo Park, Calif., campus. The lab is part of Internet.org, an initiative designed to bring Internet access to as …

BARCELONA, Spain — HTC’s smartwatch is indeed real, and it’ll be here in time for the Christmas shopping season. That’s according to HTC Chairwoman Cher Wang, who confirmed to CNET that the company is working on a smartwatch and that it will be ready for the holiday season. “It’s natural for us to have wearables because we’re a design company,” …

BARCELONA, Spain–BlackBerry CEO John Chen confirmed two new phones were on their way this year. The first, codenamed “Jakarta,” but known as the BlackBerry Z3 will launch first in Indonesia in April before moving to other markets. It will retail for less than $200. The second phone, the BlackBerry Q20 (which Chen dubbed “BlackBerry Classic” because of its keyboard) is …

BARCELONA, Spain — Gone was the glitz and glamour of last year’s Samsung Galaxy S4 launch. Gone was the showy venue of Radio City Music Hall; in its place was Barcelona’s International Convention Center, more in the vein of a typical product launch, if a little larger. Related stories Best Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 Cases TV in the Bathroom: …

BARCELONA, Spain — You would think that Nokia’s first Android smartphone would make for the start of a tense relationship with soon-to-be parent Microsoft. Well, you’d be wrong. The Nokia X, alongside its brothers the Nokia X+ and the larger Nokia XL, may turn out to be a boon to both companies. The Android phones can be held up as …

BARCELONA, Spain — Nokia will have to walk a fine line when it comes to selling its recently unveiled Nokia X family of smartphones. While Nokia X and its brethren will run on Android, they are far from Android phones. That could lead to customer confusion as the company has largely focused on Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating for its primary …

BARCELONA, Spain–HTC is the other company holding a press conference tonight at Mobile World Congress. What can we expect from HTC? While some products may show up, one smartphone that won’t be showing up is the successor to its flagship HTC One. That smartphone will make its appearance on March 25 in events in New York and London, and invitations …