Main avenue, La Fira, Barcelona, was abuzz with wireless news and schmooze Photo by Stephen Wellman

Last week I had the good fortune to attend the world's largest wireless industry, mobile computing lovefest, the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. A lot of high-tech trade shows claim they're global, but 3GSM practices what it preaches. Attendees from almost every continent do business here in dozens of languages.

3GSM sets the tone and the agenda for the wireless industry. Service providers and equipment makers lay out their product portfolios, often for the entire first half of the year. The themes at this conference go on to dominate industry discussions at other wireless events, including the big U.S. wireless gathering, CTIA.

What follows is an inside chronicle of the products, technologies, and issues that dominated 3GSM, culled from speeches, sit-down meetings, corridor conversations, party chit-chat ... wherever the best news and views were to be found.

ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

It's Sunday night and Sony Ericsson president Miles Flint kicks off the first big party of the week, at Barcelona's contemporary art museum, Metrònom. But the star of the party is the company's newest device, the Sony Ericsson W880i, a superthin 3G music phone that can store up to 900 tracks.

In addition to introducing the W880i, Flint talks up the success of the Walkman phone line. I was at 3GSM in 2005 when Sony Ericsson debuted the Walkman phone, and many in attendance were skeptical. The feeling was that a tired old brand like the Walkman would not resonate in the mobile phone market. How wrong they were! Since then, Sony Ericsson has shipped 20 million of the phones, proving that mobile music is still a big hit with consumers.

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Yet, despite the success of the Walkman phones and the hipness of the new W880i, what's on everyone's lips at this party is Apple's iPhone. It's amazing that the iPhone is still the talk of the industry almost six weeks after it was introduced (and still four months before it's scheduled to ship).

After Flint's remarks, his bosses--Ericsson CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg and Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer--join him on stage to field questions on various topics: mobile voice over IP, GPS, and--you guessed it--the iPhone. On that front, the execs offer no firm answers, though Flint offers the standard "we welcome the challenge."