We may live in an increasingly virtual world, but often it's what happens at live tech trade shows that sets the tone for what is to come. Such was the case with the flurry of major product announcements at January's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. 

This week's Mobile World Congress (MWC13) in Barcelona, Spain has been just as interesting, albeit for different reasons. One couldn't help but notice, for example, Samsung everywhere and Apple nowhere. Coming off its recent glitzy Super Bowl campaign with Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen and Oscars ad campaign starring Tim Burton, Samsung had a dominant presence at MWC13, debuting the Galaxy Note 8.0 tablet as a competitor to the iPad Mini, touting its Android-powered Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II smartphones and proclaiming that it would double tablet sales from a year ago.

Samsung also aligned itself with the show introduction of Intel's Tizen, a new mobile operating system expected to challenge Google's Android. This could potentially put Samsung, which will launch Tizen-based phones this summer, on a collision course with Google, since Samsung currently makes more Android-based devices than any other manufacturer.

Of course, collision courses are nothing new for Samsung, the Korean behemoth that leads the world in cellphones.Continue reading...

Amazon's rekindled Kindle isn't the only big tech news today. Microsoft and Samsung signed the biggest Android patent deal to date, while Nokia is now shipping the N9 smartphone (sorry, US ... and UK).

The Nokia N9 is described as "A beautifully simple all-screen smartphone. Nokia N9, a bold, all-screen phone that's incredibly fast and simple to use. All it takes is a swipe. The swipe has made our best features even better and easier to use, so you can get straight to the important things. We wanted to design a better way to use a phone, and it comes down to one simple gesture — a swipe." (It's the only smartphone based on MeeGo, which is giving way to Tizen.) More info is at swipe.nokia.com.