This year we attended the mobile industry’s largest event, the Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona. It was even
larger than in the previous years, having moved to a new venue (the huge and functional, albeit somewhat bland Fira
Gran Via). Below the pictures and video, you find some background information on this year’s major topics.
Impressions of MWC
We have put together a collage of impressions from the Mobile World Congress 2013 and our presence.
Click on any picture to enlarge it.
Video: Self-care Internet software
Sustainable support cost reduction and ARPU increase are the main benefits of our self-care and self-service
connectivity solutions. We created a short video summarizing the essence of our products. Watch the movie of our
Internet self-care suite for all devices we showed at the stand in Hall 8.
It was all about…what exactly?
Often there is a very dominant topic everyone talks about at a fair like this (the cloud, apps, smartphones). This
year, there was no single topic standing out; there were many different buzzwords in use: OTT, RCS, Wi-Fi, VAS, mobile
OS, VoLTE, ecosystems, apps, …
Mobile network operators face similar challenges as fixed-line Internet service providers as far as the increasing
number of over-the-top (OTT) services is concerned. Telcos clearly see OTT (video & audio streaming, messaging, etc.)
as a threat they need to turn into an opportunity, quickly. Cooperating with popular OTT service providers seems to be
the way of choice, for now.
Extending Wi-Fi services is another thing many operators have decided to go for. Multiple field trials and Wi-Fi
partnerships (like with Fon) are indicative of this strategy. The important question remains; how to monetize Wi-Fi
services? One approach encompasses location and customer segment based targeted advertising and a surcharge for hotspot
support as a VAS.
Interestingly new mobile operating systems (in addition to Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Blackberry OS) had a strong
presence at the MWC. The stands of Firefox OS and Ubuntu had plenty of visitors and more importantly, partnerships with
large telcos will help these new OS to at least have a chance at competing. They might even become forces to be
reckoned with.
Near Field Communication and mobile payment solutions associated with NFC seem to reach a certain maturity and they
are here to stay. Something similar could be said for Rich Communication Services, which were present mainly under the
brand name “joyn” – a brand backed by many large European telcos (Telefonica, Orange, Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone,
…).
Apps (seemingly every other stand had an eHealth app and some gym equipment to test it) and ecosystems, Voice over
LTE and mobile marketing were other topics that popped up quite often.
Ericsson’s “networked society” and Deutsche Telekom’s “connected life” provided the conceptual background to and the
guiding ideas behind many of the products and services presented at MWC.
We share this vision of a connected world, a networked society, and the convergence of technologies and have
developed
» m2suite - the single point of access to all Internet-related services
to
provide consumers with the customer experience matching that vision.