The Mobile World Congress (MWC) has closed, and as I write this article on my flight home, we are talking about 90,000 people in Barcelona. The feeling was that of having returned to a pre-pandemic demonstration, with a certain cautious optimism. Yet, on stage, most of the interventions seemed more negative, perhaps because the program requires that the material be provided well in advance of the event, and not so much because there is a gap between participants and speakers. This could also explain why the most discussed technological topic of recent months, generative artificial intelligence, has not had space on stage or in the stands, with the exception of Qualcomm’s Stable Diffusion, a generative artificial intelligence that creates images in based on user requests and works on smartphones.
Identity crisis
Part of the discomfort that was felt in the keynotes was also attributable to the umpteenth identity crisis that many operators are going through. Over the years, first with the arrival of apps and then with streaming services, operators have felt relegated to providing infrastructure without any added value to monetize. Now, with the shift to artificial intelligence, cloud computing and an increasingly connected world, they are facing the same problem. It is known that all this is possible only thanks to the networks, but this does not mean that they have to invoice in proportion to what others earn with them. During a keynote, Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters addressed this controversial point: “I believe in a clear and direct symbiotic relationship between a thriving creative industry and a thriving network ecosystem. There shouldn’t be an exclusive choice between big telcos and entertainment company”. Netflix’s operating margins – he added – are significantly lower than those of BT or Deutsche Telekom: “We could argue that they should pay entertainment companies for the cost of our content, as they did in the old pay-TV model”.
The future of the MWC
I’ve been asked several times if this type of event will continue to be relevant in the future, and I’m still thinking about it. Like at CES, most of the excitement at MWC comes from seeing real-life people after a three-year absence. This is probably even more important for the MWC, a trade show historically more focused on meetings with customers and partners. However, I wonder if the three-year interval and the longer technological cycles could make people learn to participate in these fairs in a less uncritical way than in the past, establishing rosters among the participants or simply deciding to attend every two years, for example example.
The fair looked very different from 2019, the last year I attended. No more cars, far fewer consumer-centric devices, the absence of some big brands like Sony, the dominance of Chinese brands, and 5G as a given. In reality, however, it’s not the show that has changed, but the market, and the Mobile World Congress is a reflection of that.
Telling stories
In the smartphone world, Chinese brands such as Honor, Oppo, Xiaomi and OnePlus hold market share and lead the innovation in the most popular ranges, as well as foldable devices. For an analyst like me who lives in the US, the MWC was a great opportunity to experience some of these new products first-hand, and more often than not, it was easy to see some of the solutions adopted to reach that price point. . Despite the current economic environment, the size of these companies’ stands and their marketing investments demonstrate the real challenge that a brand like Motorola faces. The build quality and software from Motorola and Samsung are still way ahead. While Samsung has a business big enough to justify its marketing investments, Motorola remains a small piece of Lenovo’s big pie. However, given the excitement a prototype like the Motorola RIZR has stirred up, the parent company should allow Motorola to capitalize on marketing. Over the past couple of years, Motorola has mastered the art of storytelling, while Samsung has greatly improved its’s. Let’s take sustainability as an example: on the one hand it is increasingly important for customers, on the other it is an issue in the focus of attention of the regulatory authorities in Europe. Chinese brands will therefore have to integrate it into their storytelling and comply with reporting rules to stay in some markets. It was interesting to see the first alignment attempts on the Honor stand, where there was a QR code to scan to download its sustainability report.
Mwc 23, Motorola’s roll-up smartphone
VR and AR were more present at MWC than at CES. Among the stands, you could see different iterations of glasses, visors and headphones, designed broadly for companies. B2B solutions are those in which the use cases are clearer and, above all, the return on investment is well defined compared to the consumer market. As was the case with the early PC market, enterprise adoption will aid popularity among consumers because it will have a positive impact on pricing. Also, the higher the penetration, the more attractive the market becomes for developers. The more applications and use cases there are, the easier it is to justify the investment, which today for consumers does not seem proportional to the return. The interesting aspect of this space is that Qualcomm is the SoC chosen for all MR headphones currently on the market, and this actually makes them the only alternative to Apple, which should soon arrive on the market with its proposal.
The MWC has always been more focused on businesses than consumers, but this year it was even more so, reflecting the opportunities many brands see. With the pandemic, digital transformation has not only gotten faster, but it has become a tool for transforming processes, and even more so for transforming the company, doing better, doing more and doing it differently. And, despite the economic crisis, there are many companies that are moving towards the future instead of remaining anchored in the past. While investment may be slowing in some areas, opportunities still exist for many brands focusing on networking, edge and cloud computing, and security to capitalize on further growth.
Space for diversity
Finally, I can’t write about Mobile World Congress, or any other technology event, without talking about diversity and inclusion. For someone like me, who has attended Mobile World Congress since the early 2000s, it was great to see more women and representation from Africa, the Middle East and South America. But the feeling was that the audience was still largely male. An encouraging sign came from the mixed panels I saw on stage and beyond at the D4T (Diversity for Tech) summit. These were technology and business panels that saw a much more diversified participation than in previous years. It’s easy to show attention to this issue: having the right person to tick the diversity box is not enough, but a good starting point is not just inviting those who have already come before, or always involving the same brands and the same countries.