(Image courtesy of AppleInsider)

The annual Mobile World Congress kicked off this week in Barcelona, Spain and even without Apple being in attendance, the iPhone is still the talk of the town.

AppleInsider has the details on the early happenings at this year’s Mobile World Congress, where carriers are busy chatting up iPhone at the same time as Apple’s rivals are introducing their own “iPhone killers.”

The New York Times made note of Apple’s long shadow over the event despite Cupertino’s lack of presence there as an exhibitor. But that doesn’t mean that the company wouldn’t be welcome with open arms, according to a spokeswoman for the annual event’s organizers, the GSM Association.

“Secretive and focused, Apple rarely ventures beyond its own well-staged promotions,” the report reads. “The company has sent executives to the Barcelona show, but has never taken center stage.”

For their part, a T-Mobile spokesman went on record that the U.S. division of the company would “definitely be interested” in the iPhone if Apple went beyond its exclusive arrangement with AT&T.

Meanwhile, the rivals to the iPhone’s App Store throne are lining up with their own products. 24 different telecom operators will be joining arms to form an alliance dedicated to building their own app store, an open platform with support from LG Electronics, Samsung and Sony Ericsson among them. Wireless carriers also on board include AT&T, China Mobile, Orange, Telefonica and Vodafone -- ironically, all Apple iPhone partners with more than three billion total customers worldwide.

Samsung has also taken the wraps off its Wave device, the first handset running their new Samsung Bada platform, which was announced over the weekend, before the opening of Mobile World Congress. The handset features a 3.3-inch anti-smudge AMOLED screen, 1GHz processor, 5 megapixel camera and 720p video playback and is expected to arrive in April.

Not to be left holding the bag, Microsoft has finally taken the wraps off their Windows Phone 7 Series, a multitouch-capable mobile operating system squarely aimed at dethroning the iPhone, if not taking it down a few notches. The company has a large number of partners lined up to provide hardware, and the new devices are expected later this year.