Windows Mobile 6.5 demo phone stolen at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

Message to Telsta executive pickpocket victim: don’t beat yourself up. It happens to lots of visitors to Barcelona. So many, that events are starting to flee Barcelona for safer cities.

A doctor told us he had just spent six days in Barcelona at a pathology conference. One of his colleagues had her passport stolen and when she went to the embassy, fourteen other conference attendees were there reporting thefts. That’s typical.

Almost a year ago, Yannick Laclau wrote that Barcelona was close to losing the Mobile World Congress, partly because of the high level of street crime in the city. The convention organizers gave Barcelona another shot, and this year’s Congress just ended there. Yeah, there were thefts. No surprise.

But among the many items stolen by pickpockets was something the entire Windows world was waiting for: the working demo of Windows Mobile 6.5. It was lifted right out of the pocket of the Australian telephone company executive who was testing it. But really, it could have happened to anyone.

Or could it? With its top secret, unreleased, mobile operating system, the one that’s supposed to crush the iPhone with its Windows Marketplace fake AppStore and copycat touch screen, the phone was a hot property. I personally know any number of thieves in Barcelona who would consider it a fun challenge, albeit an easy one, to target a specific item. Presented properly, one could probably hire the unwitting pickpocket to steal the thing, then hand it over over for little more than he guesses is its street price. I’d probably recruit Kharem, or Plaid (about whom I’ve not yet written), or the swift-swiper.

Stranger things have happened. Like the time Bob gave some tourist safety talks to police and security groups in an unmentionable Spanish-speaking country. Of course he also demonstrated his pickpocketing skills. At dinner afterward, the chief of presidential security whispered to Bob about a visiting Colombian drug lord known for ordering ruthless murders. He actually asked Bob to pickpocket the gangster! They wanted him to steal his passport. There were 19 at the dinner table that night. It was pretty easy for us to grab our driver and slip away quietly.