Mobile Pie were fortunate enough to be invited to the GSMA Mobile World Congress by UKTI, joining other UK companies including BBC Worldwide, Timeout, and Oxford Univeristy Press. It is a giant combination of 8 exhibition halls and a congress of key players in the mobile industry.
We saw stands from all the major handset manufacturers, network operators and software companies, as well as some new arrivals on the scene with their innovative products. However Apple continued their policy of not attending exhibitions and were sadly absent.
Despite that, Apple’s impact on the mobile world was telling, with the announcement of new multitouch phones and application stores. Nokia were a good example of a company following their lead, their Ovi Store promises to provide users with intelligent app suggestions with its location aware ‘recommendation engine’, and the new N97 shows off multitouch technology. Other devices of note where the beautiful looking Palm Pre and HTC Magic.
There wasn’t much of a buzz around the venue, perhaps due to the economic climate, and disappointingly there was not much representation of the content providers, who at the end of the day will provide the engaging experiences that will really get users interested!
We also sensed a lot of confusion and unsurety about the future of the industry, with supposed experts and industry leaders parroting each other’s rhetoric and vague visions of the future without any explicit details on how it was going to be achieved.
Despite these problems the trip was still a valuable insight into the state of play. Here’s a pic of an unexpected magic moment – whilst using my brilliant Flip cam to record events, the inventor of the device tapped me on the shoulder and eagerly explained that he was the genius behind it! He was so genuinely happy that we were using one, it was joyous. Behold Yoshitaro Kumagai proudly holding our Flip:
Our trip was also supported by South West Screen, whom we made daily blog reports to. They say the same sort of thing i’ve just said but in more detail and have been posted here:
