BARCELONA, Spain–Love Android or hate it, there’s no denying it’s been a hit with device makers and carriers. Exhibit A was on display at Google’s booth at the Mobile World Congress show here in Barcelona, Spain. Dozens and dozens of Android phones and tablets slid by on a curving track that looped them continuously. The …

BARCELONA, Spain–Technology is going to make it harder to be a repressive dictator, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt believes, but censorship could still create a “digital caste system” that will mean some people remain laggards in the global economy. Information inevitably will leak like water out of areas where censorship prevails, he said in a speech at the Mobile World …

BARCELONA–Think your wireless network provider is hard-nosed today? Just wait. Although executives for these operators are tired of being seen as the bad guy, they’re also willing to take stern measures to defend their businesses, several said today at the Mobile World Congress show here. That means that Internet companies, governments, and mobile phone customers must pay up. “We’ve become …

BARCELONA–Airtel has 250 million customers in India and Africa, but very few of them can afford smartphones, and Chief Executive Sunil Bharti Mittal said that’s holding the countries back. In developing countries, lower-end feature phones today are being used for banking and buying as well as for communications, but smartphones could offer much more, Mittal said at the Mobile World …

BARCELONA, Spain–Even with some significant engine trouble, it took me a day to go from zero to addicted to XCom Global‘s MiFi rental service for travelers. TheInter Communications subsidiary offers a handy service–$14.95 a day to rent a mobile MiFi network access point with unlimited data access when you’re traveling abroad. The price looks painful until you compare it to …

BARCELONA, Spain–We now know the two Android phones on which Panasonic is pinning its hopes for a successful re-entry into the world market for mobile phones. The good news: they’re both sleek, waterproof designs with buttons tucked into the back. The bad news: they’re named “Eluga.” Maybe the name test-marketed better in Europe and Japan, where the phones will arrive …

BARCELONA–Chinese mobile-phone maker Huawei has joined the Tizen Association and said it plans to build phones using the open-source, Linux-based operating system. In addition, Huawei joined Tizen’s board, which also includes Intel, NEC, Casio, NTT Docomo, Orange, Panasonic, Samsung, SK Telecom, Telefonica, and Vodafone. The association also announced the open-source release of the Tizen beta and a Windows version of …

BARCELONA–Bill Ford, bitten by the Silicon Valley bug, has dreams of a fast-moving Detroit at the heart of a radical overhaul of personal transportation. As the executive chairman of Ford Motor Company and great grandson of the company founder Henry Ford, he’s got deep roots in a century-old industry. Ford predicts a future, though, in which computing and communications technology …

Startup Audience currently specializes in improving audio quality for higher-end phones–the iPhone 4 and 4S, most notably–but now it’s going down market. The company sells small chips that process phones’ microphone signals with technology it calls EarSmart designed to identify the person speaking and filter out everything else. It’s good for voice calls, obviously, but also for newer uses, such …

BARCELONA–Half of Telefonica’s customers are in Latin America, where smartphones are scarcer than in wealthier parts of the world. But the mobile network operator hopes Mozilla’s new browser-based operating system, B2G, will change that. “What we’re selling the most in these countries is feature phones, which is ridiculous, said Carlos Domingo, Telefonica Digital’s director of product development and innovation, in …