Mobile World Congress - the future was there

 “Non ho visto niente di nuovo” [I haven’t seen anything new] – complained my old Italian friend as we were sipping a quick coffee at one of the Mobile World Congress’ bars. It was his first time at the Barcelona event and he had spent the previous day and a half walking around the 8 giant halls that make up the exhibition.

It’s true: these days it is difficult to walk around MWC and bump into something completely new and surprising, because you may have read about it online, or because there is so much to see. I pointed out that what really matters at MWC is the fact that everyone who cares about mobile is likely to be there, so new trends and interesting products are likely to come up in the hundreds of conversations one has over the week.

So one has to start by filtering out the amazing volume of noise at the congress & exhibition. Here are a few of my filters for 2013:

• It’s not about the devices anymore – the HTC One and the Xperia Z stood out as the best new Android devices, Nokia looked good both at the high & lower range and Motorola had little to show, but I didn’t sense much excitement about any of the above. The point is that they are all getting better at industrial design, the OSs are maturing and smartphone performance is impressive. Innovation will come from elsewhere.

• It’s not even about the OSs – the big players didn’t have a high profile at MWC, raising much speculation about the reasons behind it. Apple never make the trip to Barcelona, Google were satisfied with throwing the best party of the week, Microsoft didn’t go beyond taking over an entire hotel and Blackberry… I guess they decided to focus on their BB10 announcement. The general feeling I got is that the battle lines between ecosystems are now drawn: we know who the leaders are and who’s struggling to follow; they each have their strengths and weaknesses and will battle it out for a while.

 So, where was the future of mobile? Here are a few hints:  

• Intel’s perceptual computing – none of it was new, but it points to how voice control, movement tracking and gestures are quickly becoming mainstream;
• Wifi & NFC connected devices were everywhere, like the lovely GoPro, wireless speakers and NFC check-ins - the phone can talk to almost everything around you;
• Mozilla are going to have an app store - so maybe web standards and apps can coexist;
• Cloud services are better integrated, like Dropbox’s dual-account implementation on Galaxy devices;
• In-car mobility was more in evidence than ever, including Ford’s stand and Mercedes Benz’s Drive Kit Plus;
• Connected Home demos were of course also at every stand, from Sony and Samsung to AT&T and Vodafone.

 They all point to the most exciting take out from MWC: that mobile is already moving beyond the smartphone and towards a point where ‘mobile’ will be everything and everywhere, but no longer about phones:

1. The smartphone is where the real innovation is going to be for a while, as a hub for connected sensors (think GoPro), devices (like Nest or your TV) and cloud services;
2. In this world, apps will make more sense than ‘pages’ irrespective of whether they are built on native or web technologies;
3. The phone itself will however disintegrate into its parts – why carry storage if connectivity is always available? Why carry a screen if you can connect to one everywhere you go? Maybe you'll just carry an NFC sim to prove your identity and a 4G dongle for connectivity on the go.

Comments are welcome.

Comments

[Lollpop]

I would love to re post this entry on my own website will that be okay