Nokia's banana phone relaunch was a huge hit
The kinetic bustle of the 2018 edition of the Mobile World Congress began to taper mid-afternoon last Thursday, after a non-stop week of product launches, keynotes, rabid networking, and general spectacle. There’s always a certain amount of FOMO anxiety at the beginning of the week, given the near-infinite number of people to meet and things to see, but I’d doubt any attendee leaves disappointed given the smorgasbord of activity to choose from.
That said, adrenaline regularly spars with exhaustion during MWC, as the sheer size of the event and its myriad offerings can quickly take their toll, this despite the superheroic logistical and organizational skills of the GSMA and the Fira Barcelona, the week’s hosts.
Indeed, you can easily spot the seasoned MWC veterans from their near-orthopedic footwear choices.
Ericsson alone constructs what’s essentially a complete city of 6,000m2 in one of the eight halls at the conference. I mean, you can see the thing from space.
My two fitness trackers dutifully reported that I scampered about at a decent clip, clocking over 50 kilometers in total- not bad for a work week. Also, it snowed! In Barcelona!
Amidst the swirl and twirl of 107,000 attendees and more than 2,300 exhibiting companies, a few trends stuck out:
5G Networks
Everybody talked about it non-stop. Disappointingly though, in an echo of 2017, there seemed to be more breathless exaltation of future promise than concrete use cases, at least so far. Regardless, large operators are trundling along with plans for launch, with many vowing to be the first/biggest/most robust 5G provider. Devices still don’t seem like they’ll be readily available until 2019- there were a handful at the show- so all this full steam ahead does seem a bit premature. That said, T-Mobile wants to build out 30 5G networks this year in major US cities, Huawei said it signed MOUs with 45 operators to offer 5G services, etc. Key takeaway: hurry up and wait. Let’s see what comes to the table at MWC19.
Tech For Good
MWC can often seem an abandon of tech worship heedless of consequence, focused on the next big thing and how best to commercialize it.
Increasingly though, it seems like real substantial tech is being applied to global inequalities, with progressive result.
For example, Kathy Calvin of the United Nations Foundation highlighted the issue of “the unconnected,” alluding to the world’s population still without internet access, and the challenge of bringing the internet to them. Referring to great swathes of humanity as “the unconnected” somehow elicits visions of a zombie-apocalypse army rattling the gates of the world’s internet providers, but I get her point.
There still remain significant barriers to internet access for huge numbers of people- not only affordability and the concomitant knowledge set required to really harness its benefits, but also, the relevancy of the content.
This latter point requires more attention- is there content, in my language, that’s really useful to me? For healthcare, finance, community building? If not, finally getting internet access won’t make much difference.
Also falling under the heading of connecting the unconnected, I spent some time with the team from MasterCard discussing IoT and Artificial Intelligence for payments. They’ve developed an M-Pesa system in Kenya for mobile payments that allows people in rural or underserved communities without access to traditional financial services to build credit. IoT takes an even more prominent role when eventually the ecosystem becomes sophisticated enough to be used to purchase transport services, pay to use washing machines, etc.
The World Bank and GSMA also announced they’ll work together to harness IoT data for everything from economic growth to tracking epidemics. Excellent.
Very happy too to see a robust Women4Tech program at MWC this year, with many female founders, CEOs, CTOs, CMOs, etc. sharing the limelight. Also excellent.
Emerging Industrial IoT Verticals
For industrial IoT, my one true love, I looked a lot for applications in non-traditional verticals. We typically think of hardware and platforms geared more towards manufacturing, transport and logistics, energy systems, etc. but lots of other verticals are beginning to flourish in an increasingly rich and diverse IoT ecosystem.
Turkcell for example had a new service in their Lifecell OTT system which they’re beginning to market to other operators. I spent a great hour with their guys learning about their IoT solutions for agriculture. Field towers with sensors for temperature, humidity, air conditions, soil quality etc. that can cover up to a football field of range increase efficiency and reduce cost and waste for farmers. Well done.
Turkcell had a great industrial IoT sensor solution for agriculture
Wearables Exhaustion?
Wearables are generally more the purview of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas each January, but the theme still pops up at MWC. I had a great chat with a Finnish start-up, Haltian, which has been developing a beautifully designed silver-finish ring with embedded sensors that can monitor everything from heart rate to activity tracking to sleep patterns.
Haltian's sensor-embedded design ring
There did seem to be some sense of wearables-exhaustion though. With dozens of devices on the market metering everything from daily steps to sneeze frequency, I’ve heard backlash that people are ready to fling off their FitBits and climb their staircases in peace. I do think though that as the market shakes out and consolidates great solutions will continue to develop for at-risk populations like the elderly, individuals with chronic illnesses such as diabetes that need frequent monitoring, etc.
Also, Nokia Launched a Banana Phone- Cute!
In the absence of any really transcendent device launch from Samsung, Huawei and the like, Nokia continued to be a beacon of quirky, retro delight. MWC’s 2017 nostalgia winner was the relaunch of the Nokia 3310, while this year’s 8110 model was even more charming. I mean really, what’s more refreshing than a sturdy banana phone after you’ve cracked your iPhone screen for the hundredth time?
Uppity Sailfish Keep The Operating System Battle Interesting
Also, what? A competitor operating system? Bless the improbable longshot taking a go at iOS and Android. The team from Jolla is gathered from a group of ex-Nokia staff, and developed the Sailfish operating system and a smattering of phones and an ill-fated tablet to go with it, but it seems that a few years later Finnish ingenuity just keeps on trucking, against all odds. It may seem bonkers to compete with Android and iOS but it’s important to keep the ecosystem diverse and healthy by having underdogs nipping about, especially when Android seemed to completely dominate MWC this year. Time will tell how much traction Sailfish gets- the Russian government implemented it, so there’s that- but you have to admit it takes guts to go up against such heavyweight competitors. The team said Sailfish 3 will be publicly available in Q3 this year.
#mwc #5G #IIoT #Nokia8100 #Sailfish #Women4Tech