Rainy Barcelona, but good spirits in MWC itself

So I’ve survived my 7^th Mobile World Congress (my first rainy one, oh where was the lovely Barcelona sunshine when I needed it?) and it’s great to hear from many of the exhibitors that they had a much better Congress than last year and many talked of an emergence from the recession.

However, whilst there is some nostalgia over the heady days of the late 80s early 90s when glitz, glamour and entertainment on big ships and yachts were the order of the day, it’s good to know that those days will never come back (And by the way, how refreshing to see only a few stands resorting to scantily clad young girls for overweight middle aged business men old enough to be their fathers to drool over!)  Poor girls.

What’s perhaps good about coming out of a boom and almost bust time is that everyone is humbler, less arrogant, more keen to be ‘open’ and work together than before.  Ultimately, this has to be good for the customer.  More than any other show perhaps, there were more partnerships announced, more talk of openness and the ability to work together.

Two of the biggest pieces of news were around Microsoft and Google.  Undoubtedly there was a lot of buzz around Steve Ballmer’s press conference on Windows 7 to be released in time for the Christmas period.  His appearance emphasises the importance in this market.  Google unveiling its new mantra ‘Mobile First’ also captured the imagination of The Daily who gave it front page news.  Companies such as Google are fundamentally changing the mobile business and the established operators and equipment vendors need to understand how to work and more importantly compete with these new players.

Many at the show talked about the fact that with the explosion of mobile broadband, cloud computing and smart-phones, the technology is now fast becoming a reality for consumers to engage with brands, multimedia, social networking sites and applications.  Users can now check Facebook, watch YouTube, surf the web, download slide presentations and apps wherever they are, just by pressing a couple of buttons on their handset key pad or touchscreen.  

It’s undoubtedly an exciting time in which we live and reminds me of the PC explosion of the early 80s and the internet boom of the early 90s.

SCG