By Kaiser Kuo

Hong Kong—Asian telecommunications companies grabbed the spotlight on the first day of ITU Telecom World 2006, the world’s largest industry exhibition.

This year’s expo marks the first time that the event is being held outside of Geneva, Switzerland, where the International Telecommunication Union, a special agency of the United Nations, has its headquarters.

“The dominance of exhibitors from the Asia-Pacific is even higher than I thought it would be,” said Dan Elron, New York-based managing partner for communications at consultancy Accenture.

“As far as I can tell, there are more bilateral meetings going on [than at past events], and people are trying to cut deals assuming companies are going to be at ITU,” he said.

It’s the presence of so many Asian vendors that “drives a lot of the deal-making,” added Mr. Elron. “When it was in Geneva, it was in my view a lot more company showcasing.”

While the 750 exhibitors in Hong Kong’s massive AsiaWorld-Expo marked a slight reduction over the last ITU Telecom World, held in 2003, the average size of booths has increased, said Fernando Lagraña, executive manager of the ITU. Speaking at a press conference Monday afternoon, Mr. Lagraña cited industry consolidation as the main reason for the decline in numbers.

“Some companies disappeared, but exhibitors on the show floor are showing their wealth and the upturn,” he said. Fifty-six of the booths at the Hong Kong event are two stories tall or more, added Mr. Lagraña.

Huawei, Samsung on a Tear

Leading Chinese telecommunications vendor Huawei built one of those 56 booths—a three-story stand as big as a house that includes a VIP elevator to the third floor.

The six meeting rooms on the second floor of the Huawei booth were all occupied Monday afternoon as Huawei hosted bilateral meetings between Middle Eastern, African, South Asian, and European expo attendees.

Huawei announced yesterday that it expects total contract sales to reach $11 billion by the end of 2006. Contract sales for the first half of the year reached $5.2 billion, up 29 percent on the same period last year.

The company saw $3.4 billion in sales during the first half of the year from outside of China, making up 65 percent of total contract sales during the half year, up 36 percent from the same period of 2005.

South Korea’s Samsung, which follows behind Nokia and Motorola with the third largest global mobile phone market share, had a booth with an even larger footprint than Huawei’s, but it was jam-packed on the show’s opening day with gadget-loving expo goers.

Many were crowded around Samsung’s new SPH P9000, a mobile WiMAX smartphone, and the super thin Ultra Messaging i600, a Windows Mobile 5.0-powered smartphone that Samsung says is the first in Europe and Asia to offer HSDPA (high speed downlink packet access) support. Both phones offer QWERTY keyboards for popular push email applications.

Low-Rent American Pavilion

Of the 17 national pavilions at this year’s ITU Telecom World, booths from several countries stood out—Canada, Russia, and Israel for their sheer extravagance, and Iran and Egypt just for having national pavilions at all.

Then there was the United States pavilion—sadly outclassed and looking decidedly down market. “The Canadian and Israeli pavilions were paid for by their governments, “and this was paid for by the TIA [the Telecommunications Industry Association],” lamented one U.S. company rep in a low-slung booth.

Her company, Sylantro Systems, of Campbell, California, makes feature servers for hosted VoIP services and focuses on Asia’s growing might. Sylantro’s major announcement at the expo was a cross-selling deal with Huawei, which will integrate Sylantro’s application server as part of its IP multimedia subsystems (IMS) globally.

U.S. companies—including IT companies not traditionally associated with telecommunications—are making strides, however. Microsoft, for example, has substantially expanded its presence at the expo, largely to promote its Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system.

The Redmond giant made a number of announcements Monday, including smartphone deals with Samsung and Xiamen, China-based handset maker Amoi, as well as an agreement with leading Chinese mobile carrier China Mobile to offer push email service on devices shipping in China beginning in mid-December.

Motorola Replace iTunes with RealPlayer

Schaumburg, Illinois-based Motorola is also faring well in China. At a tony party in Hong Kong’s Harbour Plaza hotel Monday night featuring Taiwan-born rap/R&B megastar Jay Chou, Motorola CEO Ed Zander unveiled his company’s latest music player phone, the ROKR E6.

The phone boasts a gigabyte of SD (secure digital) card memory that can be expanded to two, and a user interface optimized for music downloading and playing.

The new ROKR has replaced the Apple iTunes support offered on previous ROKR models with RealPlayer, and supports all popular audio compression formats. Apple is reportedly planning to introduce its own iPhone soon.

The ROKR E6 phone was actually released in mainland China last week. Its debut there—where Motorola has substantially closed its market share gap with archrival Nokia—as well as the selection of Jay Chou as “brand ambassador,” are both signs of Asia’s, and especially China’s, increasing might in the telecom world.