GSMA Puts The Connected City At The Heart Of Mobile Asia Expo 2013

- Experience the Future 'Connected Life' First-Hand through a Complete City Street, Powered by Mobile Connectivity

LONDON, May 22, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- At Mobile Asia Expo 2013 in Shanghai, the GSMA will unveil a new Connected City experience, building on the success of the Connected City at this year's Mobile World Congress. Opening on the 26th June and drawing on the developments that have put the Asia region at the forefront of connected device and service uptake, the Connected City at Mobile Asia Expo 2013 will enable attendees to stroll down a city street of the future and experience the 'Connected Life' powered by intelligent mobile connections.

In partnership with China Mobile, Cisco, Ford Motor Company, Huawei, KT Corp. and SAP, the Connected City will be a life-like urban environment where attendees will experience how these companies are making homes smarter, motoring more intelligent, shopping easier and city living safer in the largest and most forward-thinking mobile market in the world. Each area will bring together the latest in cutting-edge products and services to demonstrate how a connected future, driven by mobile, will simplify and enhance people's everyday lives.

"The mobile industry continues to develop at an unprecedented pace and nowhere is this more evident than in Asia – a region that continues to experience tremendous growth and by 2020 will lead the connected devices and M2M market, both in terms of the number of devices and in terms of revenues," said Michael O'Hara, Chief Marketing Officer, GSMA. "The Connected City in Shanghai will be a reflection of Asia's market-leading position, where attendees will experience how the next wave of mobile innovation will deliver new business opportunities, enable disruptive products and services and ultimately drive economic growth."

Demonstrations in the Connected City include top-of-the-range connected cars with the latest state-of-the-art, in-vehicle technologies; innovative remote health monitoring and diagnosis services that link people to healthcare professionals from their own homes; and intelligent city services that can track vehicles or provide civic and lifestyle information via mobile devices.

The connected products and services on show in the Connected City include:

China Mobile

• Wireless City – this application demonstrates the platform capability of China Mobile's Shanghai Wireless City, which allows local residents to log onto the Wireless City website to enjoy nearly 50 types of urban information services covering government affairs, public utilities and personal life via mobile phones, personal computers and other internet-enabled devices such as tablets.

Cisco

• Smart + Connected Community – understand how smart communities are designed, built and managed through networking technologies that enable economic, social and environmental sustainability, including user experience demonstrations of mobile healthcare, smart shopping and many forward-looking innovations that are changing the way we work, live, play and learn.

Ford

• Smart Mobility – a showcase of Ford technologies featuring in-car connectivity and driver's assist technologies such as Active City Stop, Active Park Assist and SYNC with MyFord Touch, allowing the driver to interact with systems such as climate control and radio through voice commands in Mandarin or English.

GSMA

• Let's Get Ready! – 'Planning Together for Emergencies' is an educational outreach effort by Sesame Workshop, Qualcomm, China Youth and Development Foundation, and China Telecom to provide tips, activities and other easy tools to help families with young children prepare for emergencies.
• BMW and China Unicom ConnectedDrive – step into a state-of-the-art BMW and experience how this mobile connected car makes navigating China's mega-cities easier, enabling drivers to access location-based traffic navigation services by calling a 24/7 concierge service or via an in-car display.

Huawei

• Enhance efficiency through eLTE – see how eLTE solutions, which feature ubiquitous mobile network access and massive data transmission capabilities, can improve overall productivity and enhance efficiency for enterprise customers across key industries such as government and public sector, transportation and energy.
• Mobile Offices – BYOD (bring your own device) solutions feature enhanced levels of security and efficiency, optimising the user experience and enabling businesses to connect without borders or boundaries.

KT

• Smart Home – enjoy the connected life with technologies that make people's lives at home more enriched through Kibot2, an edutainment robot and a Smart Home Phone with HD voice and video enabling real-time home monitoring and streaming entertainment services including music, TV and education.
• Smart Apps – live smarter with intelligent and unique applications including integrated mobile payments, mobile learning solutions delivering self-directed English learning programs and Genie, a mobile K-POP music application with a suite of digital entertainment content.

SAP

• SAP Precision Marketing – bringing together content and information about the consumer, the promotion and the in-store inventory into a real-time management engine to create unique and targeted offers for individuals via a mobile app.
• SAP Fiori – a collection of apps with a simple and easy to use experience for broadly used SAP software functions that work seamlessly across desktop computers, tablets and smartphones. SAP Fiori includes 25 apps for the most commonly used business functions, including workflow approvals, information lookups and self-service tasks.

Also on show in the Connected City will be the FIRE! (Firefighting Interactive Rescue Environment) solution, the winning entry of a GSMA-supported competition at the UP London Hackathon event in April 2013. Entries to the competition were given access to data from British public service organisations such as the police and fire brigade and tasked with developing a mobile-connected service that could aid these organisations. FIRE! will be able to save the lives of firefighters by providing critical onsite location and essential hazard and temperature information from mobile-connected fire helmets and equipment.

Mobile Asia Expo 2013 will take place 26-28 June at the Shanghai New International Exhibition Centre. For more information on Mobile Asia Expo, including details on how to attend, exhibit or sponsor, please visit www.mobileasiaexpo.com.

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About the GSMA
The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide. Spanning more than 220 countries, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world's mobile operators with more than 230 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset makers, software companies, equipment providers and Internet companies, as well as organisations in industry sectors such as financial services, healthcare, media, transport and utilities. The GSMA also produces industry-leading events such as the Mobile World Congress and Mobile Asia Expo. 

For more information, please visit the GSMA corporate website at www.gsma.com or Mobile World Live, the online portal for the mobile communications industry, at www.mobileworldlive.com.