Now in its third year, Informa’s annual Mobile Reference Designs conference remains the only event to focus on this exciting and increasingly important industry subject. It’s been a busy year since last November’s event and this year’s agenda is packed full of the latest news, views and innovative thinking on the Mobile Reference Designs industry.

We’ve witnessed significant changes in the Reference Design marketplace this year from the entry of Google into the mobile space with its Android platform to Apple’s huge success with the iPhone. The rise of Open Source in Mobile combined with new and exciting technologies such as LTE and WiMAX are posing new and interesting challenges for reference deigns to face.

This year’s Mobile Reference Designs event will showcase the latest thinking on mobile handset architecture and will give all delegates a unique insight into the market and the opportunity to learn, network and do business with the key players in this exciting value chain.

Key Themes

• From paper to product - How OEM’s/ODM’s transform reference designs into a physical product
• Exploring what the market requires from a reference design
• Improving reference design for manufacturability
• Who owns integration problems in reference design?
• Improving collaboration - How will the value chain cope when working with many more players?
• Reducing costs in platforms of the future - How will this be achieved?
• Convergence in the mobile environment - What demands does this place on reference design?
• Android and Ovi - What do these mean for operators? Will there be disintermediation?
• What is the ROI in terms of operator handset customization?
• The role of reference design and regulation within the Femto cell market
• Virtual reference design - lowering costs and time to market
• Examining the shift from hardware to software and the importance of the UI
• Who would want to be an ODM with operators as influential as Vodafone in the market?
• Reference designs as a key contributor to competition
• Who is responsible for what parts of a reference design? Is supplying a complete design a business benefit?
• Using applications to achieve margin and differentiation
• Virtual Mobile Reference Design
• Mobile web and reference designs - How can the CPU and memory enable this?
• Examining the move away from hardware differentiation to software - How do handset manufacturers successfully differentiate their products?
• What technologies are people building into their reference design?
• What’s in the box of next generation devices? What do reference designs need to be able to offer?
• Emerging markets - How cheap can you go? What’s reference designs role in producing low cost handsets? Volume in very cheap handsets - Sub $40
• What’s beyond 3G? WiMAX, LTE, 4G? Who will be the winner out of these cellular connections?
• What new features will be winners? Will video take off?