Fresh back from The Mobile World Congress -
Read our MD’s report on how the future of mobile

communications is shaping up!

Barcelona hosts the 3GSM in February, this is the World Conference for all that is 'mobile'. It's a staggering bonanza with exhibitions and conferences that spread across 8 gigantic halls making the NEC look tiny. 60,000 delegates and exhibitors descend upon Barcelona occupying all available hotel rooms, filling up tables in restaurants and wandering down Las Ramblas where the street performers entertain and the ladies of the night are aggressive! I was lucky enough to attend and enjoy some interesting industry perspectives alongside some good tapas and paella meals.

There were some fantastic presentations and discussions from major industry players reporting on the year past and looking into the emerging themes for 2009. The most impressive for me was the CTO of Google, followed by the CEO of Skype. Alongside the massive impact of Apple with the iPhone, what these players signal is that the market has changed for ever. The Mobile Operators will no longer dictate the customer experience on their mobile phone. Apple broke the mould and have showed that when you make the mobile phone interface intuitive and the applications useful, people will use their phone for everything that they use a desktop computer for and more. Google's CTO claimed that there are 3 major drivers for massive adoption of mobile's for mobile internet usage:

Data Plans

People are nervous about the cost of 'surfing' on their phone. When there is a 'flat' charge - as in the fixed internet world - people's usage patterns change. He backed this up with an example of a small US-based Mobile Operator called MetroPCS who have Flat Plans and users generate 10x more data traffic than a 'typical' user on a variable payment plan.

Powerful Internet Browsers on the Mobile Phone

Google's new Android, Apple and Palm have all adopted the latest 'open' standards around the W3C specifications for HTML5. This spec relates to the database, application cache and geo-location data. This all sounds a bit technical but what it means for developers of applications is that they can standardise their developments around this. It will no longer be a 'closed' shop and the specs have 'opened' for all to see. The Google CTO demonstrated the power of this standard by showing the latest version of Googlemail, Google's free internet-based email service running on an Android phone. The way it worked was amazing, every bit as powerful as Outlook. Even when he turned the network off, the application worked.

Software that is optimised for the unique aspects of being Mobile

Clearly geo-location is important - where are my friends, are they 'present', where's the nearest cafe., petrol station etc - all played visually back to the user on a map, but without the user describing where they are. Point and click rather than complicated data entry works. The list goes on.

The message here is that the Mobile Operators do a great job of providing services to customers, they are vital in the eco-system, but so are the handset manufacturers and the developers of value-added applications. So when standards are adopted by the entire industry, and walled gardens opened, the customer has a greater experience. Perhaps what is most interesting is that they ultimately ‘use’ more AND are prepared to pay more, so everyone wins.

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