Best of 4G Awards: An insider's view on the finalists, trends

Thanks to Yankee Group’s partnership with Connected Planet (which includes this Road to 4G World Web site, leading up to this month’s event in Chicago), Connected Planet editors were able to pitch in (along with a slew of industry experts) to help judge the event’s 4G Awards, which recognize innovation in the 4G ecosystem.

Today, Yankee Group announced the finalists for the awards (see: 2011 Best of 4G Finalists Revealed). The actual winners will be announced in a special awards ceremony at the event – we look forward to seeing you there.

We certainly don’t want to spill the beans on which entries will end up walking away with awards in the seven different categories, as well as the “Best of Show” prize for the most innovative, ground-breaking 4G technology or service of them all (see below for the categories and finalists). But a few trends stand out:

- Small cells and other cost-saving, spectrum-stretching architectures are already making their mark on 4G. In many ways, this has been the biggest story of 2011 as vendors and operators look to tweak traditional macro-network thinking and fundamentally alter the infrastructure landscape with small cells, femtocells and other offload approaches. It of course makes sense—and Wi-Fi in particular has been helping stretch 3G networks and improve the user mobile experience for some time. But the concepts behind next-generation small cell and offload approaches are coming to the fore in altogether new ways that will impact mobile networks for decades to come.

- Devices are maturing, and having a distinct impact on various carrier networks and on the overall user experience. It seems fitting to be talking about devices on the day the iPhone 4S is launching. That iconic device – which by the way, STILL won’t sport a real 4G radio (bypassing LTE and WiMax at least for now) – certainly launched the mobile revolution. But new devices (both smart phones and tablets) and new OSs (especially Android and one could argue Windows Phone) are poised to have just as big an impact on the next-generation of mobile, and to do so in an especially carrier-agnostic and 4G network-friendly manner. Has the time yet come when “4G” is more important than “apps” or the “iPhone” in terms of influencing how users make their mobile choices? Not yet. But the day is coming soon and the impact on the 4G ecosystem will be profound.

- The day of the fanciful app is over; tomorrow’s mobile apps are about functionality and utility. As mobile devices become mission-critical tools and 4G networks emerge as the platform that enables them, the next-generation of mobile apps will no longer be about fun and games. With two distinct form factors to play off of (the smartphone for ultimate portability and the tablet for a slick user interface in still take-along packaging), tomorrow’s mobile apps will likely combine social, mobile and media capabilities in fundamentally new ways. But mobile will also likely follow the evolution of the Web, which initially was about this new thing called a “web site” but which eventually subsumed desktop, client/server and even mainframe applications, opening them up to whole new classes of users. Mobile apps will do the same, but extend access even more universally by breaking the bonds of the desktop and delivering functionality in content directly to the user’s that need it, wherever they are.

Without hinting at any likely winners (we hope), those are some of the trends we saw reflected in the many Best of 4G Award entries we judged and helped circulate among our esteemed colleagues. Review (and congratulate) all the finalists below, and hope to see you later this month in Chicago.
Finalists for the Best of 4G Awards include:

* Best New Mobile Device:
o Infomark
o Nokia Siemens Networks
o Samsung

* Most Innovative Network Deployment
o Alcatel-Lucent
o Gemalto
o Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN)

* Best Mobile Commerce Solution
o Aditux
o Alcatel-Lucent
o Pontiflex

* Best User Experience for Mobile
o Alcatel-Lucent
o Momac
o NSN

* Best Mobile App for Tablet or Smartphone
o Bitstream
o LogMeIn
o TerraWi

* Best New Network Infrastructure Solution
o Broadhop
o Huawei
o Powerwave
o Ruckus Wireless

* Best Overall Innovation in Mobile
o Airspan
o Alcatel-Lucent
o Cisco

The final Best in Show category will be determined based on further vote on the collected category winners and announced at the show.