It feels like the early morning rush of commuters at a train station on a key junction, yet I'm on the upper walkway that connects the 8 pavilions at the new Fira Gran Via expo grounds in Barcelona that is host to the Mobile World Congress. Over 85000 attendees flocked to the annual gathering of the worldwide mobile crowd this year (2014) to see the products and services of more than 1800 exhibitors. Now, a few weeks later, as the dust of announcements, trends and gossip settle, here are some memorable observations from media, analysts and others who visited the show, including myself.
Great expo, but what about the conference?
Those of you who remember the original location of MWC in Cannes (titled 3GSM) or previous versions of the event at Barcelona's Montejuic fairgrounds will miss the distinct charm, the ease of getting there, and strolling around a confusing maze of booths without ever being connected to WiFi. What you now get instead is a long train ride, blisters on your feet from doing the rounds, BUT an admiringly well-organized exhibition. Hats off to GSMA and the venue people! Yet the adjunct conference pales substantially in terms of content. Passes start at €2,000.00 which is asking a lot for a conference agenda that fits on to a few pages and primarily boasts key note speakers of notoriety who are broadcast anyway on the many wall-like screens scattered across the fairgrounds.Wearables herald a new era for devices
Wearables were this year's big new theme with smart watches and health bracelets everywhere. Will the consumer who is accustomed to never bother about regularly charging "jewellery" accept this new burden every other day?
Wireless charging by way of placing a device on a mat or specific surface is breaking through the ice with two consortia proposing different approaches.The Wireless Power Consortium is promoting it's Qi technology based on inductive charging whilst Rezence (formerly A4WP - The Alliance for Wireless Power) believes its magnetic resonance approach is more promising.
The Nokia X was launched at the MWC - notable in that it is a Microsoft device that uses Android instead of Windows' mobile operating system. A difficult balancing act lies ahead for Microsoft, and as Jim McGregor from Tirias Research notes, a clear downside its that it does not offer Google Play store, making the app side on the Nokia X rather unappealing.
What’s inside the Sony smart
watch?
TechInsights
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What’s Inside the Pebble
watch?
ABI Research
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What’s inside the Nike+
Fuelband SE?
TechInsights
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Wireless charging by way of placing a device on a mat or specific surface is breaking through the ice with two consortia proposing different approaches.The Wireless Power Consortium is promoting it's Qi technology based on inductive charging whilst Rezence (formerly A4WP - The Alliance for Wireless Power) believes its magnetic resonance approach is more promising.
The Nokia X was launched at the MWC - notable in that it is a Microsoft device that uses Android instead of Windows' mobile operating system. A difficult balancing act lies ahead for Microsoft, and as Jim McGregor from Tirias Research notes, a clear downside its that it does not offer Google Play store, making the app side on the Nokia X rather unappealing.
Smartphone pricing is spiraling downwards in an attempt to capture lower-income markets segments. Case in point: Mozilla (mobile version of its operating system Firefox) teamed with Spreadtrum (Chinese mobile phone chip maker) to show a WCDMA/EDGE smartphone reference design that is expected to retail at no more than $25.00 owing to the low memory requirements of the browser. We'll have to wait to see if this promise is fulfilled.
Smartphone manufacturers are attempting new, innovative ideas to escape the unimaginative slate-life form factor. LG's new G Flex banana-shaped smartphone sports a large curved display with superior viewing qualities. Retailing at around € 800.00 this is not a smartphone for everyone, but certainly an eye-catcher.
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| LG's G Flex - Source: http://www.lg.com |
Russia's Yota breaks the mold by featuring a second always-on, full-sized e-ink display on the back of its YotaPhone that opens up a set of never-thought-of-before useful features.
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| The YotaPhone with an always-on full.sized e-ink 2nd display - Source: http://yotaphone.com |
Phone sizes are definitely on the increase proving the point that the shift from a device used primarily for voice calls to a browser/emai/messaging/entertainment platform is gaining further foothold. Apple beware! For the uninitiated it is indeed a weird spectacle to see users hold almost tablet-sized devices to their ears for that all important call.
My next smartphone will be a 64-bit one
Ever since Apple introduced its 64-bit A7 application processor in the iPhone 5S, many other vendors have followed suit. The MWC had its fair share of announcements with Intel, Marvell, MediaTek, Nvidia and Qualcomm all announcing 64-bit chips with smartphones using these due towards the end of the year. The questions remains if bringing the performance of servers to mobile devices through a wide-bus architecture may be overkill. But remember, during the nineties many pundits were convinced that 8-bit mobiles would suffice forever. So the story goes on.
64-bit mobile processors to
dominate by 2018
ABI Research
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Who needs 64-Bit mobile
processors?
EETimes
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Cellphone & Tablet Chip
Markets
Forward Concepts
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Cost cutting in the infrastructure world
Virtualization of
functions in the network, particularly on the packet core and transport
layer, is on the agenda of most infrastructure vendors as cost cutting goes into its next round. As Caroline Gabriel of Rethink Wireless notes "battle lines are being drawn, and the players are placing big bets on unproven technologies and new architectures."
Particularly smaller players are providing new solutions that will
drive down costs of the network and they will certainly be the target of
acquisitions during the months ahead.
Small Cells that solve the challenge of overcoming the data capacity crunch in urban, enterprise and residential areas with high subscriber densities are now becoming real and entering the deployment stage. Yet overcoming the high cost of backhaul (in relation to the cost of the cell itself) remains an issue, as an Informa analyst notes. In a similar vein, Frank Rayall of Xona Partners reported "Backhaul is the problem!" last year.
Backhaul is the problem
