Mobile World Congress 2012 –Summary, Conclusions, Trends

MWC12 has come and gone –with attendance ballooning to approximately 67,000 visitors, the event is becoming as much a test of stamina and personal fitness as much as being a showcase of new devices, infrastructure and mobile lobbying (mostly by the GSMA).

Each yearly edition comes with its own unique flavor -3 years ago saw the rise in prominence of content providers (and the App Planet) ,2 years ago the industry was in crisis-mode and the mood was gloomy at the show. Last year, the Chinese manufacturers staked their claim on the mobile sector with force. This year, the ambition and determination of Chinese manufacturers ZTE and especially Huawei was made even clearer.

Of all the devices, the Huawei Ascend series with their quad-core processors, clear displays and crisp Dolby sound impressed, though HTC were not far behind with their line-up (even though it had less marketing pzazz).

Nokia made an astonishing comeback at the show, with a very large area in Hall 7 dedicated to showcasing their new 808 PureView 41MP award-winning Symbian phone and the new Lumia line-up that was created with a grassroots approach to design and has plenty of appeal to that key 25-35 socio-demographic with its stylish casing and colour combinations. It is clear that WindowsPhone has all the cards in place to become a serious Number 3 OS player, and it is now down to executing on strategy.

Perhaps disappointing was the lack of true innovation in devices at the show (I was showcased a 2005-style GPS app by NTTDoCoMo this year , which was a very bizarre experience). I was amused by the waterproof handsets and tablets by Fujitsu ( a good idea) and by NFC-enabled advertising billboards by SK Telecom, but overall, the term  “innovative “ was not the order of the day.

My personal best marketing award goes to Android/Google for captivating the imagination of congress delegates with different styled Android figures, a touch wall, an Android robot capable of making customized device cases and, of course, the Ice Cream sandwich ice-cream. Mobile is about having fun in a personalized way as much as it is about communication, and Google gets this, so hats off.

Mobile World Congress 2010 (#mwc10) Summary

BARCELONA-With the MWC maelstrom over, now is a good time for me to reflect on last week's show and share my thoughts about the experience.



This was my fourth Mobile World Congress and while it may not put me in the Veterans Club (and my repeated meetings with mobilists from the 'Cannes days' made me keenly aware of this), it does give me some insight into how the mobile ecosystem is evolving, at least since the dawn of the 'Mobile 2.0' days.



Overall, attendance was probably lower than last year and the fill-rate of the trade floor was below 100%, but this was no surprise. What surprised me was the general positive feeling (especially compared to last year) amongst participants that 'the worst was over'. In fact, the show was buzzier than many people had expected and there was clear evidence that while some incumbents were still in the doldrums (read mobile operators), newcomers were seeing decent growth (read content developers).



The App Planet may have been physically located at the far end of the show but in terms of buzz, it sat squarely in the centre of the show. Ok, there were some companies in Hall 7 that could only loosely be associated with Apps, but it was here that the various developer conferences took place and that the smaller, innovative content companies were to be found.



The WipJam event on the last day of the show tackled many of the challenges facing developers in the increasingly competitive world of apps (kudos to Caroline & the team for a great event):



-how do you get your app to be discovered

- how do you monetize your apps

- how do you create addictive apps

-how do you sell cross-platform



and many more issues.



I took part in two discussion groups on ‘Marketing Apps’ and ‘Features of Addictive Apps’. Both were extremely valuable. From the first one, I took away some interesting points on 'app discoverability' using Pinch/Flurry tools as well as a pointer to the presentation below from Mobile Monday Silicon Valley:

Mobile Monday Silicon Valley App Store Secrets Increasing Sales Feb 8 2010

View more presentations from mario tapia.

...to be continued...

Mobile World Congress 2010 Agenda Planning in Barcelona

BARCELONA -The coming week in Barcelona is set to be as buzzing and intense as ever during Mobile World Congress time, with an agenda packed chock-full of seminars, development days, meetings, parties, PR stunts and more.

The key to success as always will be to pre-select and prioritise carefully which events to attend (there are simply too many good ones to attend, unless you happen to have a body clone out there!) . This will depend on personal and company preferences and your specific objectives for the event. I recommend jotting down between 3-5 things you want to take away from the show (and side-events) and then matching that to your planned timetable. Is your key objective to learn about open development environments but have no time booked in to learn about Android? It could be worth re-jigging your agenda.

A few events on my agenda so far:

Innovation Exchange 2010

I've been invited to take part in a Panel Discussion at the Innovation Exchange 2010 (Applications & Monetization) event hosted by Qtel with support from the GSMA and MEF on the 13th\14th of February at the Hotel Skipper.

Social Media Round Table

I'll also be taking part in a Social Media Round Table discussion on Monday 15th February hosted by ACS at the Gran Marina to talk about "Capturing the Power of Social Media to Revolutionize the Customer Experience"

App Planet

I'm looking forward to the App Planet event in Hall 7 at the Mobile World Congress on Weds February 17th where SonyEricsson will have a 'Creation Day' for developers. The Xperia X10 Android device has had some rave reviews, so I'm interested to see whether developers are excited about generating content for it.

WIP Jam

The WIP Jam session at the Congress (registration now closed) on the 18th will feature a discussion panel on Augmented Reality applications and will help answer the question of whether the hype is justified. As AR is a hot topic, this is an unmissable session (more info here).

TechCrunch Europe

Finally, there is the Techcrunch event on the 17th Feb (offsite from the Congress) featuring Ilja Laurs of GetJar amongst others, and bringing investors and start-ups together (more info here).

I'll also be exhibiting in the Innovation Zone of the MWC at the GeoMe Stand: if you're a blog reader and you're at the fair or one of the other events, come and say hello! If you can't find me, send me a tweet @ricferraro.