The TestPlant team have arrived in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress! It’s been a busy Monday on our stand and it’s interesting to see the much higher priority quality and testing have for digital companies compared to when we first started coming to MWC 5 years ago.
But I’ve managed to get away from our stand for a quick tour around the show and wanted to share five themes…
(1) IoT. The title this year is “Mobile is Everything” as MWC tries to lay claim to the IoT space; and it looks like they are succeeding. IoT is everywhere.
(2) Connected Car. I’ve seen more cars inside the show than outside today. It feels like every other stand has a car parked on it. Again it looks like “Mobile is Everything” is true for MWC.
(3) Virtual Reality. It’s been a while since MWC had a cool gadget you could get excited about – this year that gadget is virtual reality headsets. I’ve tried a few and VR was at the centre of Samsung’s announcement.
(4) 5G. Just to show that the old-school GSM-World crowd are still at the show 5G is a big topic; but of course it’s introduced as the driver behind IoT and the Connected Car.
(5) The most interesting theme for me though was the style of the stands. The traditional MWC stand is uber-modern and minimalist such as the Tron-like Intel stand. But this year we’re seeing lots of stands that look like an Ikea living room or part of Selfridges. What’s this about? I think it’s about humanising technology and making it look less threatening to all consumers; and this more than anything else is an indication that the connected world is here.
