AI

Mobile World Congress Barcelona 2018 – What I’m Looking Out For

Another Mobile World Congress is upon us! Last year’s edition broke yet another attendance record, rounding out at 108,000 visitors and occupying every last corner of the substantial conference space that the Fira de Barcelona boasts. The congress extends its reach far into the city over the course of the week, with restaurants, hotels, and hot nightspots teeming over with visitors and booked out far in advance.

For the last several years I’ve been lucky to visit firsthand as an attendee, first during business school at ESADE and now representing the IoT Solutions World Congress. My team and I will be there with our partner, the Industrial Internet Consortium, and will meet with industrial IoT companies, tech clusters, governmental organizations, etc. developing projects in the sector.

No matter what your goals are for MWC, the week inevitably results in an exhausting but very fulfilling experience. As part of the noisiest mobile gathering globally, every organization that participates is vying for a snippet of your attention; indeed many organizations reserve their most important and creative launches for Mobile World Congress, so it’s worth keeping an eye open for upcoming trends and new players in lots of different verticals.

That said, one can’t be everywhere at once, so each year I narrow down a list of a few curated highlights that I’d really like to focus on.

Last year’s MWC theme was a slightly ambiguous “The Next Element,” while this year’s is “Creating a Better Future,” which seems marginally more concrete. There does appear to portend a focus for 2018 on the transformational capabilities of certain technologies, for example 5G and AI.

Some major themes I’ll be sniffing around:

5G Networks

Last year there was a lot of buzz around 5G proofs-of-concept, with much effort devoted to simply explaining what the new standard might do for networks and hypothesizing the verticals that could consequently see the most benefit.

From what I’ve seen, some early 5G-connected devices will be on show, and companies will bring use cases for everything from first network rollout plans to consumer IoT to more mature enterprise solutions. I’m curious to see how genuinely commercial the products and services on offer are, as opposed to still in concept mode.

Artificial Intelligence

This is by far my favorite theme for MWC18. Artificial Intelligence will be omnipresent across all verticals, platforms, devices; you name it. There seems to be equal push for both consumer and enterprise AI, while in the case of IoT by comparison, the wow-factor will be weighted on the enterprise side.

As usual with AI, performance boasts need to be taken with a measure of skepticism, since reciting out a weather forecast isn’t nearly as complicated as, say, getting a device’s AI assistant to determine which type of flowers to send to a friend, or more complex behavioral algorithms or machine learning, for example.

Regardless, many companies will be peddling their AI wares at MWC so I’ll stop by a few places like LG for example, meant to be doing AI in its mobile devices. Curious to see how it compares with the Siri-Alexa-Cortana sisterhood. I’ll also look to see who’s working on the nexus of blockchain, industrial IoT, and AI.

Net Neutrality

More political than almost any other topic at MWC18, net neutrality will definitely elicit some strong opinions this year. The subject continues to tumble around regulatory circles with combative legal pushes from both tech heavy-hitters and consumer groups.

Ajit Pai from the FCC (now under investigation for corruption charges) is still scheduled to attend MWC after skipping CES in Las Vegas last month due to death threats over net neutrality. I’m not expecting that anything truly tectonic will be negotiated during MWC, but there should still be some interesting conversations regardless.

Smartphones Galore

Both Samsung and Huawei were reported to be presenting new top-of-the-line models at this year’s MWC. I’ll definitely try to get some time with the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+, if I can wiggle in among the crowds. Huawei seems to have backed off a launch of its new P-series but perhaps we’ll have a last-minute surprise. Other groups presenting new devices are said to be Asus, Sony and Lenovo, for example, so I’ll keep an eye out for that.  

I expect some hallway chatter too about whether all the fuss around 5G might actually hinder device sales, as consumers and enterprise purchasers potentially forego investment decisions until they see which devices will be 5G-capable.

What’s Coming From China?

Both myself and the IoT Solutions World Congress are looking east lately. After a fascinating visit to Shanghai and the World Internet Conference in WuZhen last December, I’m interested in seeing what China brings to the MWC table this year. I’m looking forward to closer inspection of Huawei, AliBaba, Baidu, China Mobile, and a gaggle of smaller players to see what’s coming down the pipeline. Huawei and Baidu for example recently signed a deal to co-create a new artificial intelligence platform, which may have some interesting pre-promotion.