As usual, we were treated to a plethora of top end mobile phones in Barcelona this year, and some real beauties were unveiled, with the companies behind them reaping the rewards.
But for every action in the mobile world, it appears there has to be an equal and opposite reaction, with a few surprisingly big names disappointed us too – we look at the highs and lows of Mobile World Congress 2010.
The winners
HTC
Come on, this one was a gimme. Any company that can have as successful a year in 2009 with the Magic, Hero and HD2 and follow it up with even more hot handsets has to be one of the success stories.
The technology media has gone gaga over the new Android-powered HTC Legend and Desire – so much so that we're even seeing people with little interest in technology asking us whether they should wait to buy these phones – something usually only the iPhone manages.
Couple that with a beautifully short time to market after announcement – less than a month in some cases – and HTC has clearly come up smelling of roses this year.
While you'd think this was because Google has just released its own phone – that's actually not the reason for inclusion here (and not just because HTC seems to have nabbed the praise for the Nexus One).
No, we're talking about a couple of other points – first up, the success of Android. So many phones at MWC 2010 were released based on this platform: the HTC Legend and Desire, the Motorola Quench, the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini and Mini Pro.
Heck, even Alcatel got involved with the OS – and that's shows something.
Add to that CEO Eric Schmidt's well-received keynote (Flash for Android, text recognition and a huge movement from the company into mobiles), and you can see that Google seems set to make a successful transition into the mobile space at just the right time.
We'll admit it – we didn't think that we would be writing about Ballmer's Brigade in this year's winners category, after the previous incarnations of Windows Mobile filled us with complete indifference.
But Windows Mobile 7 (or Windows Phone 7 Series as it's more annoyingly called) is the product of Microsoft going back to the drawing board and having a think about what's needed for the current mobile user.
The company seems to have finally realised that the consumer market is as important as the business one – and WinPho 7 seems to have taken the best of both worlds.
Admittedly, it's months away from release, but we were very impressed by the likes of living tiles, high resolution screens and top end manufacturing partners.
Jobs probably ain't worried, but Microsoft made some great strides in the mobile market at this year's event.
