Mobile World Congress, Day 4: It’s a Wrap!

Another Mobile World Congress is over! I have to confess that I say this with a great deal of relief. I am not sure I could have survived one more day of long hours, wall-to-wall meetings, noise, artificial light, irregular (and often missed) meals and lack of sleep!

That said, this year’s event has been truly fantastic for Comptel. Our expectations were very high, but they were easily exceeded. Not only did the vast majority of our pre-set meetings happen, but many very positive unplanned and ad-hoc meetings also took place . Furthermore, unlike many events that contain “world” in their names, this event can genuinely claim to be global. We met operators and partners from all over the globe.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get much opportunity to walk around the exhibition halls. However, one thing I did notice (in addition to the omnipresence of Android) is that tablet computers are taking off big time. New models were on display at a number of booths, and many of the sales people trying to convince me to invest in their fabulous events or publications used tablet computers to present their compelling arguments. This is obviously an interesting development for the mobile industry, not least for operators who need to provide and manage the bandwidth necessary to connect all of those devices to the ‘net. Bigger screens mean more data traffic, of course. Interestingly though, I heard from IDC analyst Elisabeth Rainge that the majority of tablet connections are through Wi-Fi rather than mobile networks; in other words, tablets are more of a nomadic tool than a truly mobile one.

As for the highlight of the event for me? It could have been the Light Reading Speed Dating event, which was a great deal of fun, and very useful at the same time. But on balance, I think it was watching England’s Arsenal football team play the mighty Barcelona team in a local bar last night. I can still see the looks TelecomAsia editor Joseph Waring and I got from locals, when we punched the air with delight as Arsenal overturned the Barcelona lead to win 2-1!

Great game, great show!