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Monday, March 4, 2013

MWC 2013: New Venue, New Industry Spirit from Barcelona


Mobile World Congress 2013 has given the industry a boost of revitalization, focused on creating change and driving technology innovation to improve how we connect.

Mobile World Congress 2013 wrapped up last week in Barcelona at a new venue, the magnificent Fira Grand Via, with record attendance. Although this attendance created too much traffic and congestion, it did not dissuade industry delegates from collaborating and demonstrating a new industry spirit focused on innovation and human advancement in the area of mobile technologies.

Even without notable industry leaders such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, which declined to participate so that they could maximize their own events for major announcements, LG, Huawei, and ZTE took main stage with audiences and industry press. Samsung clearly established position with sizable show investment in the areas of mobile devices and consumer focused messaging, though it also decided to strategically shift its flagship “Galaxy S4” launch to New York in two weeks.

MWC 2013 showcased new themes; most notably it spotlighted Software Defined Networking (SDN) by vendors. In the mobile IP infrastructure segment, Juniper focused on the release of a virtualized platform for SGSN/MME functions. ACG expects other vendors to update road maps and further make announcements in 2013 in this area.

Machine to Machine (M2M) was another major theme with presentations and discussions on standards-based industry adoption. M2M industry has been fragmented, but mobile SPs see significant opportunity in developing services and ecosystems. ACG expects M2M data traffic to consume 20 percent of global mobile data demand in five years.

Small Cells segment saw a plethora of announcements: silicon leaders such as Broadcom and Texas Instrument released new product families to support multigeneration technologies such as 3G and LTE within a single System on a Chip (SoC). 

Mobile SPs also announced initiatives, such as cloud-based services to support third-party (HTML5 compliant) platforms from Jolla, Mozilla (Firefox OS), and Ubuntu (Linux).

Although much of the discussion was focused on the OTT industry segment and how to work together, ACG believes mobile SP business models will need to further evolve to adopt the range of innovation offered by companies such as Viber.

MWC 2013 did not disappoint. Attendees walked with innovative ideas and information, which will, no doubt, will be the foundation for creating more change and driving technology innovation in 2013.

For more information about ACG Research's mobility syndicated and consulting services, contact sales@acgresearch.net.







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