Reflections on Mobile World Congress 2010 – Barcelona

By Philip Stanfield

Mobile World Congress (MWC) was different in 2010. I know it rained the whole time but there was a real buzz in Barcelona. 2010 was all about the lifestyle impact of Mobile through social media and the industry’s products, services and solutions to drive the use of data.  Everywhere one turned there were demos of applications and smartphones.

MWC is now two communities. The consumer focussed, mobile internet savvy community embracing everyone from media companies and handset manufacturers to innovative operators and software vendors; and the traditional world of voice and base stations and OSS/BSS.

The Mobile Monday ‘Where Mobile meets Media’ event was fascinating with a panel session including the BBC’s Lucie McClean, Helen Keegan, Mobile Marketer & Techno Kitten, and Steve Ives CEO TAPTU.  Over half the audience was female and under 35.  There were lively informed debates on the end of newspapers (yes) and magazines (no) with the arrival of iPad et al; whether App stores will be here in 5 years or if everything will be in the ‘The Cloud’ – oh and what young people really want from a phone (free IM); and the fact that most people don’t yet own an iPhone!  

The big boys made big announcements too. Google’s Eric Schmidt made a keynote speech and announced that Mobile was now at the heart of Google’s future. And his ‘Mobile First’ mantra states that 3 unique areas have now converged on the mobile device – Computing Power, Interconnectivity and the Cloud.  Schmidt said ‘If you don’t use the power of the Cloud – you’ll fail’.   He also said Google’s Android was selling on devices at a rate of 60,000 a day.

Vodafone’s CEO Vittorio Colao reported that ‘one in four of the handsets on Vodafone’s network were now smartphones with 40% annual growth.’ He also talked about the GSMA’s OneAPI initiative which is defining the standards to make it fast and cheap for developers and applications such as Facebook to access services such as location on the operator’s network.  Kevin Smith from Vodafone presented in a series of OneAPI workshops with some real progress reported including a live pilot in Canada across all its operators.

Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer drew the crowds for the launch of Windows Phone 7 Series and showcased, you guessed it, its social networking and content capabilities. Microsoft had a very busy stand for the whole show.

The Mobile Operator community made a big announcement to launch an international applications platform or Wholesale Applications Community. This initiative is backed by 15 of the world’s largest operators including AT&T, Docomo, China Mobile, and Vodafone with a combined 3 Billion consumers. The business model is likely to be similar to Apple’s App Store and Vodafone’s 360 App Store – with operators taking a 30% revenue share. The initiative should make it attractive to developers with a large potential market. And joining the dots the use of the OneAPI standard could make applications interesting, for example the ability for an App to know the location, at any moment, of your children who don’t have smartphones!

2010 promises to be a transformational year for the whole mobile ecosystem.  There is almost a perfect storm of forces at play:

• very high levels of consumer expectations based upon their internet experiences;
• big brands, such as Google, Apple & Facebook going ‘over the top’ to capture the hearts, minds and wallets of consumers;
• the mobile operator community responding with strategic initiatives such as OneAPI and the Wholesale Applications Community in an attempt to hold on to subscribers and monetise the mobile internet. 

I really believe 2010 will be a mobile year to remember.  The proof of course will be seen in the sunshine of Barcelona in February 2011.