3GSM: Quotes of the week

It was a busy week. Here is a selection of soundbites you may or may not have heard.

"I know little about your industry."
Serial 'easy' entrepreneur Stelios Haji-Ioannou addresses the world's foremost mobile industry conference. He launches easyMobile next month.

"I wish I could predict what the future will be. It'll be better than today - that’s what Orange is all about."
Orange CEO Sanjiv Ahuja when asked about the next big technology.

"Orange is a 20th century brand."
3 UK CEO Bob Fuller quotes his boss, Canning Fok of Hutchison - the company that used to own Orange.

"Bill shock is not an option."
T-Mobile CEO René Obermann says the industry must change - though not resort to high prices.

"I urge you to look at this. It works."
Bharti Telecom CEO Sunil Mittal on the type of low-tariff model used in India.

"Wi-Fi will continue to grow but hotspots where you pay by the hour will turn out to be a short-term business."
Qualcomm CEO Irwin Jacobs making the case for laptops that use a cellular 3G datacard.

"I expect a lot of questions afterwards on mobile phones."
Siemens Communications CEO Lothar Pauly pre-empts a Q&A session that will focus on the possible sale of his company's loss-making handset business.

"Some companies' knee-jerk reaction [during lean times] is to cut R&D but that can come back to bite you."
Motorola CEO Ed Zander on getting through the downturn.

"We've got to take the complexity out of the industry."
Motorola's Zander again, this time replaying the old Sun Microsystems' mantra. (Surely he's not the one to take over at HP. Is he?)

"By far the biggest productivity tool in the world today is wireless data."
RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie once again puts the case for his Blackberry and other ways of doing apps over wireless.

"If you or your boss are up for a jail sentence, rather than the sack, for doing anything untoward with mobile email - as is now the case with some regulatory frameworks - then you will do anything to get it right."
Analyst Dean Bubley of Disruptive Research

"Enterprises want predictability of cost."
Jessica Figueras, Ovum practice leader for telecoms and IT.

"We inherited superb DNA from both our parents."
SonyEricsson president Miles Flint.

"All devices have to be attractive enough to fly."
TeliaSonera CEO Anders Igel speaks out against ugly 3G handsets.

"We are holding ourselves to a slightly higher standard than we did before."
An executive at scandal-struck Nortel on a new approach at the equipment vendor.

"We made a lot of capital investments [in operators overseas] and that ended in failure."
NTT DoCoMo CEO Masao Nakamura gets honest about past forays.

"How saturated is the market? If it truly is then we stay away from it."
Angel Gambino, BBC controller, business development and emerging platforms, on a criterion for Auntie offering mobile content services.

"It's more subdued with the Windows Mobile brand."
John Starkweather, product manager at Microsoft's Mobile and Embedded Devices division, talks about how you have to try harder to find a Microsoft badge on many of its smart phones now.

"The idea that monocultures are bad for ecology applies here. But that's not going to happen."
PalmSource CEO David Nagel on the dominance of a single mobile OS platform.

"The search for a new CEO is underway."
Former UK government efficiency tsar and now Symbian non-executive chairman Sir Peter Gershon pre-empts questions about outgoing boss David Levin at the smart phone OS-maker.

"I haven't seen an offering that a mobile network operator can launch that a competitor cannot launch within two weeks."
John Strand of Strand Consult on one reason why differentiation is so hard.

"Think 'smart pipe' instead of 'dumb pipe'."
O2 CTO Dave Williams explains the difference upcoming IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) technology will make.

"There is nothing WiMax is doing that you could not see in UMTS or HSDPA."
Nortel president Carrier Network Operations Pascal Debon

"We have an acronym problem."
Ericsson CTO Hakan Eriksson

"My bet is that China will go directly [to] HSDPA."
Nortel's Debon again.

"It all started 10 years ago. Without easyJet I wouldn't be standing in front of you… I was in the right place, at the right time, with the right father to finance my dreams."
easyGroup's Stelios again.