By Megan Atiyeh
What would the tech world be without a little controversy? Perhaps controversy is too strong a word, but I am a bit surprised at how mixed the feedback has been from the media and analysts that attended and/or covered the news coming out of Mobile World Congress (MWC) this year.
MWC is still highly regarded as the most important tradeshow of the year for clients in the mobile industry. Despite the sluggish economy and generally poor attendance at industry events over the past year, it has been reported that last week’s event attracted 49,000+ attendees, which is great to see. While I have never been to Barcelona, I’m fairly certain there are worse places to be for a tradeshow…namely Las Vegas (anytime of the year) or Atlanta in the summer. Not fun.
The media and analyst’s assessment of the prevailing themes from the show were consistent but individual feedback ranged from “It was a snooze,” to enthusiasm akin to George Costanza’s infamous “We’re back baby, we’re back,” so why the mixed reviews? Topics like LTE, Femtocells, and how best to grapple with the explosion of data on mobile networks were the key themes this year. However, instead of the big, glitzy announcements that are often the norm at tradeshows, it seems many vendors announced less dramatic, incremental steps forward on the path toward LTE or real strategies to address the data offload problem. Not as exciting, perhaps, but maybe a nice change of pace and just what the industry needs to move the ball forward.
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