The annual Mobile World Congress is an industry event that puts together the best of the mobile industry at one venue. This year it will be held in the Fira de Barcelona in Spain and attendance is expected to exceed 100 000.
The MWC was originally titled the GSMA but in 2014 when the event was held in China it was officially rebranded as the Mobile World Congress. The event stretches from the 26th to the 1st of March. It will be a veritable Who’s Who of the industry with a whole host of noteworthy keynote speakers. Some of the recently confirmed speakers at the Congress this year includes:
- The much maligned Ajit Pai, Chairman of the United States Federal Communications Commission and opponent of Net Neutrality.
- Jim Yong Kim the President of the World Bank
- Brigitte Baumann the CFO and also founder of Go Beyond Early Stage Investing
- Ricardo Nevares, the Governor of Puerto Rico
- Marie Ehrling who is the current Chair of the Board at the Telia Company
- Brian Behlendorf the current Executive Director for Hyperledger
- The CEO of Teralytics Alastair MacLeod
- The President of the United Nations Foundation, Kathy Calvin
New and additional exhibitors were also announced for this year’s event including Mercedes Benz, BMW, Kazakh Telecom, China Mobile, Cisco, Microsoft and many many more. This event is a must see highlight on the mobile calendar and the anticipation and hype surrounding this event is almost tangible. It is almost as exciting as your betting NZ options.
Some Noteworthy Happenings
Many attendees will however be on the lookout for one of the main events, the launch of Samsung’s S9 mobile device. Samsung’s DJ Koh announced the plans to reveal the new device at the MWC at a special press conference.
They have not confirmed if the phone will retain the numbered naming convention of previous releases or if they have decided to make a fresh new start with a fresh new name for their flagship device.
While details are not easy to find on the new devices, the company has only recently in March last year released the S8 which more than competed with the IphoneX so consumers are not expecting a huge new paradigm for mobile devices, but with Samsung you never know.
What has also got people excited are the rumours that Samsung will also be unveiling a foldable phone set for a 2019 release. Samsung may just pull a fast one on us and unveil the new foldable S9, but we will have to wait until the end of February to find out.
What mobile fans won’t be seeing however is the new flagship model from Huawei, the P20. The Mate 10 was a very well received device from the company so the anticipation has been building for the new device from Huawei.
Their devices have always felt like they are just missing a certain something so perhaps they are moving back the device release date to add that special X factor that has been missing.