I spent most of last week at the Demo@15 conference in Arizona, the annual show where brand new products are introduced to the marketplace in front of a big crowd of investors, press and technology entrepreneurs. (Disclosure: Network World's events team runs the Demo show.)

The most surprising aspect from the show was that there weren't any mobile devices being launched - in fact, there were very little products on display that have anything to do with the mobile lifestyle.

Even Motorola, which makes a ton of mobile phones, was only there at the show to launch its iRadio service. The service lets you listen to commercial free music, stored MP3 and other audio content in your car. IRadio streams pre-downloaded music content from a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone to your car stereo.

It's possible that a lot of the mobile phone and other device makers were debuting devices at the 3GSM conference in Cannes, France, (which took place the same week as Demo) or are waiting until the March CTIA Wireless show in New Orleans. But we still expected some new mobile devices to make their debut at Demo and felt a little disappointment when we didn't see that next "gotta have" device.

Still, there were some interesting applications that complement mobile devices. Openwave Systems announced the availability of its Mobile Device Manager, a wireless device management platform that helps reduce customer care support. One of the features of the system lets users back up and restore or transfer personal information that resides on a user's handset in the case of either a new phone being purchased, or in the unfortunate case of a device being lost or stolen. Such personal information could include a user's wallpaper, contacts and other data. Go to http://www.openwave.com for more details.

Another couple of ideas that should intrigue mobile workers is the idea of "place shifting," the concept of being able to access content stored on home networks whenever you're away. Avvenue showed off software that lets people view and share all of their multimedia content (photos, files and video) from wherever they are. Two Demo@15 sponsors, Sling Media and Orb Networks, demonstrated their technology that lets people view television content over a broadband network on either a Web-enabled laptop or handheld devices. Sling Media plans on doing this with a $250 box that connects to a TV and home network, while Orb Networks plans a subscription service that also connects to a Media Center PC or other such system.