MWC 2014 - Mobile World Congress Wrap-Up

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?

What’s inside the Sony smart watch? TechInsights	http://bit.ly/1gEYCHI
What’s Inside the Pebble watch? ABI Research	http://bit.ly/1mkpMvz
What’s inside the Nike+ Fuelband SE? TechInsights	http://bit.ly/1d6PzEu

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.

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.

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	http://bit.ly/1ooHGfd
Who needs 64-Bit mobile processors? EETimes	http://ubm.io/1egJKCG
Cellphone & Tablet Chip Markets Forward Concepts	http://bit.ly/1nB4Amx

 

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

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and Internet-of-Things (IoT)

Enabling all electronics and industrial devices with cellular or wireless capabilities is a promising way forward for operator's to expand their revenues outside of their traditional subscriber-based voice & data services. The challenge in the M2M (machine-to-machine) sector remains that every usage scenario is application specific with particular deployment considerations and constraints. This does not scale well and thus monetization remains a formidable challenge for operators. Moving to the home, Glenn Lurie of AT&T envisages that  "anything that has a current going through it" as a potential IoT (Internet-of-Things) device. Stan Boland whose start-up Neul offers complete IoT wireless solutions, including endpoint modules, base stations and management in the cloud, states that "the price of modules needs to drop below $2.00 and they need be protocol-agnostic" for IoT to become a viable option for consumer device and white good integration.

Enterprise Mobility is big

Mobile collaboration and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) are driving security and cloud services in the enterprise space.  According to Andrew Brown of Strategy Analytics, the global mobile workforce will increase from 1.3 billion this year (2014) to 1.6 billion in 2017 with the Asia-Pacific region being particularly vibrant. No wonder that Enterprise Mobility is a key theme at MWC, taking up increasing exhibition space. I was surprised to see Airwatch (recently acquired by VMware) to have a booth that seemed to be one of the largest at the show despite a worldwide headcount of only 1600.

Enter "The Connected Car"

New to the MWC are exhibitors such as Ford, BMW, and Volvo, and the operator Telefonica showing a Tesla Model S on their booth. The trend "The Connected Car" is more than just about infotainment and navigation inside the car. Automotive manufacturers are testing new waters by embedding modems in the vehicle enabling better management from outside the car, allowing it to become one further item to deliver useful information to its owner's smartphone. It's also all about tightening the bond between vehicle manufacturer and owner through remote diagnostics to the point that tomorrow's car might be viewed as a further asset of an automotive manufacturer's fleet.

OTT - just another acronym but with enormous operator implications

The $19 billion Facebook acquisition of the WhatsApp somewhat eclipsed many other exciting announcements at this year's MWC. That's a formidable valuation for a 5-year old company with just over 55 employees and a product that some view as better SMS messaging for a $1 subscription fee per year. Yet it certainly drives home the point that Over-The-Top (OTT) services such as WhatsApp require priority attention from operators who will certainly see their share of the lucrative $1 billion per year worldwide SMS business shrink as time progresses. 

See you next year

All in all it was time well worth spent in Barcelona despite dizzying overnight costs. Mobile World Congress does really draw the worldwide mobile crowd in every respect.