March CTIA Madness and a Mobile Concierge

I find myself in the middle of NCAA Basketball March Madness in, of all places, Las Vegas. It turns out I'm leaving before the Sweet Sixteen starts and that's good. If not, I'm sure I'd find myself sitting in one of the betting rooms here, watching the games on TV.
 

I hear people talk about CTIA as if it's the America's version of Mobile World Congress. It sort of is, but it's not nearly as big in size. The whole ecosystem is here, from app developers to handset accessories to air conditioning for the Cos.  One thing that is a bit different, beyond the size, is there is more talk about WiMax here. At Mobile World Congress, I didn't see too much about WiMax - it was as if LTE eclipsed it. But because of Sprint and Clearwire's support, WiMax (4G) has a bigger presence here. In fact, they announced additional market plans here at CTIA.
 

In between meetings, I had some time to walk the floor a bit. The DoCoMo booth was interesting to me - I saw some very high-def phones, "eye-ball controlled" phone earpieces, and some auto-GPS technology that allows what they call a mobile concierge to let you know what is going on and what you can do - all because of location-based services.
 

And clearly the iPhone hysteria is gone.  A lot has happened in a year. Is the iPhone really unique anymore?  Is AT&T the only one offering Smartphone services? No. There are other players such as Android out there now.  And you can feel and see that as you walk around here.