All About... Mobile World Congress

Last week saw the biggest event in the mobile phone industry’s calendar - the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It’s where handset manufacturers unveil their latest models and the industry’s bigwigs talk through the issues facing mobile. At a time when mobile is still struggling to make its mark as an ad medium, what lessons does this year’s event hold?

1 Smartphones - and in particular the iPhone - continue to drive the mobile industry. In particular, Taiwan’s HTC stole a lot of headlines by unveiling new touch-screen models. For the marketing and media industry, the trend is significant because it means more high-quality devices on the market capable of accessing content and applications.

2 According to Eamon Hession, chief executive of Puca Europe, the big news this year was mobile applications. “Each year there’s usually one big hyped-up ‘new thing’. Two years ago it was mobile TV, last year it was mobile advertising and I think this year it was ‘app’ stores,” he says.

One of the biggest announcements of the Congress was Microsoft’s launch of a Windows Mobile application ‘marketplace’. This means Microsoft will join Apple, Google, Research in Motion and Nokia in setting up stores for mobile applications. Less reported, but just as significant for Asian users, was the story that China Mobile is planning its own application store to launch later this year. BDA chairman Duncan Clark argues that not all will be successful, but after Apple’s success with its App Store all mobile players are looking at it. “It’s a great opportunity,” he says. “The key lesson is that operators have not been very good at figuring out what people want. So why not open a store and have other people do it?”

3 Microsoft’s heavy presence in Barcelona is indicative of a further trend - the drive by the computing giants into the mobile space. Sanjay Chheda, regional VP of Microsoft’s consumer and online business for greater Asia-Pacific, says there is a real push to promote the idea of handsets as computers, which includes the key function of seamlessly transferring data from one gadget to another. “Handset sales are expected to be down in 2009 so in that sense there’s the feeling that people want to do more with their phones when they buy them,” he says.

“Software companies will create products to increase usage of phones’ full capabilities. It all works to amplify the role of the consumer.”
John Lagerling, head of wireless business for Japan and Asia-Pacific at Google, says the presence of the computing giants is a sign that “openness and speed” are becoming key drivers in mobile.

“It’s exciting to see the mobile industry embracing the openness which has shaped the internet and driven innovation,” he says. “In these times particularly, speed matters. Carriers are rolling out higher-speed networks, users want faster browsing, developers want to innovate faster, and handset manufacturers need to reduce their time to market.”

4 Asia itself was a key theme of this year’s Congress. With China finally rolling out a 3G network, there should soon be greater opportunities for services such as mobile TV. According to Hession, Chinese phone manufacturer Huawei had a “very big presence” in Barcelona, unveiling an iPhone-ike smartphone for release later this year.

However, the news from India was less bright, with further delays to the roll-out of 3G. Rajat Mukarji, chief corporate affairs officer at Idea Cellular, said the company didn’t “see anything happening in the next four to six months”, though he still predicted that mobile broadband should overtake fixed broadband in India by 2010.

5 The outlook for mobile advertising remains mixed. Mobile search continues to gain traction globally - Google estimates that 80 per cent of its mobile search queries are now outside the US - but Hession notes that marketing in general is becoming less of a focus in the industry. He adds: “I think some of the initial hype has died down as people have started to roll out mobile advertising projects and realised that beyond mobile content players (who account for a huge percentage of mobile advertising) there are still a lot challenges in getting other non-mobile content brands on board.”

What it means for…

Marketers
- Expect to hear a lot more about mobile applications. With more ‘app’ stores springing up, this will grow as a media channel.
- There should also be more developments in traditional mobile functions such as SMS. Hession notes a lot of talk at Barcelona about new technology for messaging as the industry looks for cheaper ways to innovate.
- However, expect fewer predictions that this year is the ‘year of mobile’ in the marketing industry, as the hype around the medium dies down a little.

Media Owners
- The continuing rise of the smartphone should continue to raise the potential for services such as mobile TV.
- China will be a key focus for new mobile services in the year ahead as 3G rolls out. India, however, remains several years behind.
- The drive by the computing giants into mobile should produce better overlap between PC-based services and mobile services. That will give users more opportunities to access and transfer content.

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