Predictions: What's Hot at MWC 2009
While open source and sustainability are the official themes of Mobile World Congress 2009, the real buzz will be generated on the show floor and at the many after hours parties that surround the event.
In 2008 the official conference centred on "ubiquitous networks, services that aren't reliant on mobile operators, mobile's social and economic value and the mobile digital content revolution". But word on the street before the show was all about Apple's iPhone and Google's Android platform. In the end both were conspicuous by their absence: Apple's non-appearance and Google's miniscule car park meeting room the best that the pair could muster. Although their influence still stretched far, with the real buzzwords on the show floor - and the phrase most popular in exhibitors' straplines - being "user experience". So what will MWC 2009 bring?
What's Hot...
- Widgets - these small handset based applications enable users to easily and quickly access their favourite mobile content. Normally a widget will do one thing well, such as deliver the latest sports scores or weather information, but the real fun comes when they're 'mashed' to create something new. Content providers like widgets because they're a fast track to building consumer loyalty, handset OEMs are keen because it allows them to transition to a 'services' model and operators are pushing widgets because of the data pull through. Consequently a mini ecosystem has already been built around widgets, with platforms being provided by players such as the Nokia service Widsets, Qualcomm's Plaza and Yahoo! Go, alongside independent offerings from Opera, Bluepulse, Bling and others. A surefire hot topic at MWC!
- Location Based Services - LBS has been front of mind at MWC for years but only now has the tipping point been reached, particularly in Europe, with operators having deployed a-GPS services at the infrastructure level and mass market handsets like the Nokia N95 and iPhone 3G making connected LBS services a central part of the device. Yahoo! Fireeagle has been creating the underground buzz in recent weeks but the question still remains: aside from data throughput, how is the industry going to monetise non-mapping applications? Check out the Navteq Global LBS Challenge for some interesting answers. The global winners will be announced at MWC 2009.
- Mobile Advertising & Ad Funded Content - this is the year that mobile advertising is going to take off, we were told in 2005! It may have taken a bit longer than that, but the reality now is that network and technology players in the mobile advertising space such as Ad Infuse and Admob are delivering hundreds of millions of impressions every month, with some impressive case studies of how offline brands can use mobile advertising to drive revenue. The really hot debate in 2009 will be about the balance between ad-funded and ad-supported content and how we can make ads relevant and contextual, without compromising privacy and user experience. Innovative players like Greystripe and Smaato, who can deliver ads into applications and those aforementioned widgets, should have a lot to say at the show.
- LTE v Mobile WiMAX - the battle for fourth generation mobile technology has been underway for a while now. The mobile WiMAX standard has been ratified as IEEE802.16 and the 3GPP roadmap has included 4G for years... now it gets dirty. While questions still remain about the cost of building out infrastructure and buying the required spectrum, mobile WiMAX will happen with the US operator Sprint committed to a $4bn WiMAX deployment. How will the 3G operators react? Expect trench warfare on the show floor.
- Femtocells & In Building Coverage - just don't utter the c-word. Yes, convergence has been spoken about until the cows come home, but enterprise, SME and (soon) home femtocell coverage is happening and with it brings the promise of ubiquitous 3G coverage, superfast mobile broadband and lots of sexy converged services. As mobile geeks seeking that "always on presence" we like it, but we just don't admit it!
- Mobile Social Networks - think Nimbuzz, Wadja, Flirtomatic, Peperoni, itsMy, Buzz City, Loopt, Twitter, QIK, JuiceCaster, Kyte, Flixwagon and the rest... not to mention m. versions of Facebook, Bebo and MySpace. It's hot but can anybody make money from it?
- Mobile Banking & Payments - talking of money, paying for your goods and services via your mobile phone is a reality. From independents like M-Pay, to giants such as Visa's payWave, which promises to integrate contactless, cashless systems into the phone, mobile micro-payments has been on the industry's lips in 2008. Mobile payments are at a nascent stage but expect some big announcements at MWC 2009.
What's not...
- Mobile TV - MediaFLO is cool, DVB-H not so much, IP-DAB just dreadful but when will we see mass market take up of a service that for so long was considered the 'promised land'? The Beijing Olympics this summer were seen by many - not least the European Commissioner on the matter, Viviane Reding - as a target for rolling out mobile TV services, yet they're still to appear on a global scale. Expect the industry to continue its lobbying of European regulators, begging for the spectrum harmonisation needed to launch scalable services and see mass consumer uptake.
- Linux Mobile - a marketplace that consists of Android + Symbian + Windows Mobile = LiMo's impending death. There may be 20-something handsets in the pipeline, and mobile geeks may love it but the promise of FOSS Linux on mobile for the mass market is over. Discuss!
- UMTS @ 900 - it will happen because the economics of 3G in the 900Mhz spectrum band just make sense. Get going already!
- (3G) iPhone - for a handset that represents about one per cent of the total device market there's an awful lot of media coverage. Even if, as rumoured, the nano iPhone is launched this year Apple is some way off the 120m devices that Nokia ship each quarter. Are you bored yet?
So that's our round-up. Why not join the Schwartz team at Mobile World Congress 2009 over a glass of sangria to discuss?
Posted by Ed Barker on August 6, 2008 at 9:32 AM
