Mobile
World Congress 2008
The biggest annual
It was clear that not only the
communications networks and services are converging but so are the entertainment
and communications sectors, as lines blur between them. This was visible by the
varied speakers which included the likes of Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone, actor
and filmmaker Robert Redford, Wang Jianzhou, CEO of China Mobile, John Chambers,
CEO of Cisco, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO of Nokia, Black-Eyed-Peas front man
will.i.am and film actress and filmmaker Isabella Rossellini.
In addition to the visible network giants
like Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Network and Huawei, Mobile entertainment and
content also got a lot of coverage at the show with an entire hall dedicated to
multimedia content for mobile devices. The Mobile Backstage event at the
To make sure that the att
endees get a variety of choices, the event
offered a number of co-events including; GSMA Leadership Summit, CMO Forum,
Fraud Training Programme, Government Mobile Forum, MOBILE BACKSTAGE, Mobile
Innovation Marketplace, Business Operations Symposium, and International Mobile
Gaming Awards.
For those seeking knowledge on a
particular topic, MWC offered a number of seminars like Mobile Money Transfer,
HSPA Evolution, HSPA Workshop, Personal IM, Mobile Broadband Solutions,
Pay-Buy-Mobile, Open Connectivity: Enabling Global GSM Roaming and Interworking,
Mobile Action Against Child Sexual Abuse Content: Drop-In Info Centre and NRTRDE.
“After our highly fruitful participation in the 2007 edition of this Congress, we were eagerly awaiting this year’s GSMA Mobile World Congress, which is undoubtedly bigger than all previous editions of the event. Info2cell.com’s success over the years has been mainly due to our ability to perfectly identify consumer requirements and respond with the most appropriate service offerings, in line with international trends and standards. This makes our participation in important industry events such as the GSMA Congress extremely vital,” said Bashar Dahabra, Founder and CEO of Info2cell.com.
Global Mobile Awards was the
pinnacle of the whole week of events and festivities with the top mobile mughals
and entertainers coming together under one roof. The gala dinner and awards
ceremony celebrated the innovator in the field of communications and
entertainment; and mobile phone was given the title of the ‘fourth screen’.
Media was pampered at the
event and the media center sponsored by Huawei was second to none. Many of the
leading operators and vendors hold press conferences at the Congress,
highlighting new services, initiatives, and products on exhibition.
Sunil Bharti Mittal, Founder, Chairman & Group CEO Bharti Enterprise
was awarded The GSMA Chairman’s Award.
From down under the Australian
incumbent's CEO Sol Trujillo high lighted customer experiences included coverage
and quality as the ultimate experience and not the platform carrying it. He also
mentioned that he selected HSPA over Wimax because of its clear roadmap towards
LTE and attributed his high ARPU to high speed data cards offered to his
subscribers. I-Mate set the launch of its Ultimate 8502 and the Ultimate 9502
for March, as the first handsets to use both HSUPA and HSDPA on Austra
lian incumbent Telstra's third
generation Next-G network. As expected, LTE
was a hot topic. China Mobile announced joining Vodafone and Verizon
Wireless in the trials of LTE technology. Vodafone Group CEO Arun Sarin
called for the industry to incorporate WiMAX into LTE while Hakan Eriksson, CTO
of Ericsson said that it is too late
to accommodate the mobile WiMAX standard into LTE. BT defended its FMC vision
and stated that its ‘fusion’ is still alive and well.
On the advertisement front,
Montefiore shared their success with the audience by stating that their offering
is "doing very well," with its SMS advertising solution, known as SMS
2.0, and is progressing with location-based advertising in the
Craig Ehrlich, Chairman GSMA at the Global
On
the subscriber database front, Sprint Nextel and Apertio said that they are
working together to consolidate all of the
On
the mobile entertainment front, India-based Hungama Mobile said the global
mobile entertainment industry is currently worth between $27 billion and $30
billion, but that figure will grow to around $42 billion by 2010. In 2004,
Bharti Airtel became the first mobile operator in the world to premiere a film
by streaming it across its Edge network to mobile subscribers three days before
its theatrical release. Even though it was ‘less than perfect’ but it
displayed that such an effort can be attempted. Content
was a hot
topic as SK Telecom said that operators and content providers need to move fast
to support the roll out of new mobile content services such as mobile TV.
According to another survey, it seems like people are leaving mobile TV due to
high price and poor quality of service. World can learn from 
et
provider Softbank 90% of all handsets shipped in
On the vendor front, it was all
about lowering capex and opex, as the Chinese vendor, Huawei displayed its
recently developed 4G base station designed to keep costs down by supporting 2G,
3G and forthcoming 4G technologies, such as LTE and WiMAX on the same platform
which gives it a competitive edge over other vendors . Huawei is not only
competing with its western counterparts but also keeping a close eye on Chinese
competition. Huawei is not known for its terminals but as a matter of fact, it
has sold a lot of handsets in 
3G/HSDPA enabled, meaning whole
albums can be downloaded in same time as it takes to download a single song with
current sets; also, the device is likely to be entirely subsidized by operators.
On the practical side of things,
AdaptiveMobile tied up with Cisco to offer parental controls for mobile
handsets. Even though this is not a developed market, they feel that this is a
service which can be charged for, sicne the age of an average user is getting
less and less, and hence can result in a lot of revenue. Telecoms
operators in the
An innovative gadget, this collapsible HSPA phone is the perfect device to read e-books.
On
the legal and regulation front, GSMA expects a simplified roaming agreement
system to be commercially available this year, but big operators will be the
most likely to benefit at first. According to total telecom, the decline in
international retail roaming prices means mobile operators are
under pressure to both cut the cost of
providing roaming services and offer new services. The current complexity of
mobile operators' interconnection regime, however, poses a huge hurdle to
achieving these objectives. Roaming
is still based on bilateral agreements between operators, which made sense when
there were only a
‘Mobile Focus’ was one of the ‘invitation only’ events for media co-held with MWC gathered a selected few
to
display their products and solution before the rest of the world gets to enjoy
them.
On the OS battle front, Qualcomm
has pledged allegiance to Linux by announcing to join the mobile Linux
foundation. The
LiMo Foundation, which was set up to develop an open-source operating system for
mobile phones based on Linux, believes it is far ahead of the Android platform
led by Google, since it has launched almost 20 handsets (by
Motorola, LG, Panasonic, NEC, Samsung
and others) based on its OS. The
mobile experts stressed for a need to reduce the OS from 50+ to two or three.
Industry experts believe that Symbian, Windows and now Linux will battle it out
for the
market share.
Yahoo which was selected by T-Mobile
Europe as its mobile search partner in a deal that displaces Google, unveiled
progress with its mobile search programme, oneSearch, and said its target is
still to be the number one company in the mobile search market. Compliment to
oneSearch was the launch of, oneConnect, which enables a mobile user to
integrate all their contacts and social networking activities onto one platform
and also offers presence and location.
On
the ‘green’ front, China Mobile identified a number of environmental
projects it has in place, including a scheme to recycle mobile phone batteries,
environmentally-friendly packaging, and the use of solar and wind power at rural
base stations. China Mobile has also signed an agreement with Ericsson, Nokia
Siemens Networks, Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei
to equipment that conforms to energy-conservation standards. It plans to extend this agreement with other vendors in future. Green was also the theme propagated by Huawei, the Chinese vendor of mobile and fixed gear.
The Mobile World Congress in 2009
will take place at the Fira de Barcelona,
For more information please visit www.mobileworldcongress.com.