5 takeaways from MWC Barcelona

I made it back safely from Mobile World Congress and after a few days recovery I feel almost human again. Here are my Top 5 takeaways from last week:

#1 MWC is back!

Before travelling to Barcelona I had some doubts about how many attendees would actually turn up in Barcelona. @gsma CEO John Hoffman talked up the prospect of 50,000 visitors at the event but there was a lot of scepticism in the industry about this claim. In fact his forecast turned out to be conservative, with more than 61,000 attendees across 4 days. It was less busy than in previous years but there were enough people to create a buzz, and the reduced number of visitors made it easier to get around inside the Fira and created shorter queues outside for taxis and trains. This year we also missed the traditional rolling strike action from transportation workers :)

#2 You can't replace face-to-face

After a couple of years of Zoom calls and Teams meetings it was great to have interactions with "real" people again. Almost everyone commented on how happy they were to meet again with colleagues, customers, partners and vendors. It was a little strange with everyone wearing masks (from what I saw there was almost 100% compliance with GSMA's guidelines) but very useful to be able to see people's reactions and body language. My ears still hurt from wearing a close-fitting FFP2 mask for a week, but I think it was a price worth paying. Marketing relies so much on the voice of the customer and it feels as if our feedback loop has been properly restored.

#3 Cybersecurity is a really hot topic

You can normally predict a long time in advance what topics will be trending at MWC (5G, Open RAN, public cloud, AI ...) but this year Cybersecurity made a late appearance on the radar. Clearly the geo-political situation has changed dramatically over the last 2 weeks and this was reflected in many customer discussions. The range of potential threats is also increasing as we start to move more workloads to the cloud and the number of IoT devices multiplies. @ponemon institute had some eye-watering calculations about the average cost of a data breach (~$4 million) and some more useful estimates on how AI and automation can reduce the overall dwell time and speed up the resolution of cyber threats.

#4 Immersive Tech takes a vacation?

In previous years Immersive Technology (Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality ...) has been a big part of the MWC experience. This year it was much less conspicuous, despite all the hype about the Metaverse. Whilst that is mainly due to the pandemic (sharing a VR headset with strangers is not a good idea right now!) I wonder if it tells us something else about human nature? By now we've all seen amazing VR demos that make adrenaline race through our bloodstreams ... but often these experiences fail to scale successfully. And after 2 years of social restrictions do we want a fully-immersive Virtual Reality, right now? I have always felt that the promise of Augmented Reality was over-shadowed by the hype around VR. Whilst VR might be "cool", AR just seems more practical with a wider range of potential applications and users. Let's see what happens in this space.

#5 Plus ça change

Whilst some things change ... it seems that others are destined to forever remain the same. Just like in previous years there were plenty of expensive branding showcases and lots of "interruption marketing", mainly from the device makers and car manufacturers. Like before, some of us tried to squeeze in too many meetings - and forgot just how huge the Fira is. And the tired faces I saw on day 2 told me that more than a few of us made the "rookie error" of treating MWC as a sprint, instead of the marathon that it is!