Day two at the Mobile World Congress saw a flurry of carrier smartphone announcements, HTC’s first tablet, and cross-network communications collaborations.

 

China Mobile and Alcatel-Lucent shared plans for a technical collaboration covering a cloud based RAN that will be one of the first networks to utilize the vendor’s lightRadio architecture.

 

The pair are also showcasing an Audi A8 equipped with Time Division Duplex and Frequency Division Duplex variants of LTE, running demonstrations of navigation services, video streaming, virtual desktop, video conferencing, live broadcast and music downloads.

 

Spanish incumbent Telefonica teamed with eBay to bolster mobile shopping services offered by mobile subsidiary O2.

 

Huawei boosted Android smartphone numbers with the Ideos X3, and tablet numbers with the 7-inch Ideos S7 Slim.

 

Deutsche Telekom launched the “affordable“ Move by T-Mobile smartphone, set a 2Q launch date for Samsung’s Galaxy Mini in Europe and the US, and detailed its first LTE data stick – the Huawei E398.

 

HTC kept its powder dry on day one, but came out all guns blazing on day two with its first tablet – the Flyer -, which runs a re-touched version of the firm’s Sense user interface; updated Desire, Wildfire S and Incredible S smartphones; and the social networking focused ChaCha and Salsa, which come with Facebook pre-installed.

 

Maintaining momentum in tablet announcements, Orange launched a seven-inch own-brand device running Android in Spain, Romania, Poland and Slovakia.

 

IVONA Text to Speech missed the opportunity to name a new developer portal IVONA Develop.

 

Giesecke & Devrient and NXP claimed to have cleared a major barrier to mass-market NFC handsets after validating joint security software covering interfaces and SIMs.

 

And major European carriers Orange, Telecom Italia, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica and Vodafone agreed to launch a new version of the GSM Association’s Rich Communication Suite from late 2011, providing cross-network instant messaging live video sharing and file transfers.