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Mobile World Congress thoughts – Google comes out of the corner

01 March 2010

February witnessed a very cold, wet and windy MobileWorld Congress in Barcelona, the mobile industry’s largest event of the year. MWC 2010 was attended by 49,000 mobile aficionados, up about 2,000 on 2009, according to figures released by the GSMA. Overall, the feeling was more upbeat than last year, which wasn’t difficult, when most people’s thoughts were about the recession and whether they would still have a job when they returned home.

MWC remains an important event. I’ve been attending since 2000 when it was called GSM World Congress and even though the past decade has seen the industry often use the event to overhype its under achievements on many an occasion, this year was slightly different. The titans of the mobile industry seemed a little lost and lacking in direction, while for the first time that I can remember, the titans of the internet industry were setting the agenda for 2010 and beyond. It actually seemed like a web event in many ways and the interesting elements were, as always, at the friction points between the former emperors of the industry like handset makers and network manufacturers and the new whizz kids on the mobile block – internet companies and apps developers. As always, however, Apple still preferred to keep its involvement very low key.

Apps were very much in evidence elsewhere in the Congress: they were at the heart of a host of discussions at the Conference ( including a fascinating panel discussion on VC investment in app start-ups ) and were likewise central to the product launches and attendant strategies outlined by many of the big players. The apps community even had its own premises ( The App Planet, formerly Hall 7 ). Perhaps the most high-profile announcement of this sort was the Wholesale Applications Community ( WAC ) in which 24 network operators will join the four members of the JIL initiative ( Vodafone, China Mobile, Softbank and Verizon ) in launching an open international applications platform. I’m not convinced by this – remember these are the same companies that couldn’t make MMS interoperate so how they will accomplish this, remains open-ended…

Meanwhile, cloud computing featured prominently in the Congress Agenda: Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s keynote on Tuesday emphasised that Google was focusing on a “Mobile First” strategy, and that cloud-based, shared applications were the way forward. His thoughts were clearly shared by many vendors – Sony Ericsson announced the launch of their Creations platform aimed at facilitating end-user publication and modification of community content, while Telefonica confirmed that it is to launch a suite of cloud computing services in Latin America in association with NEC.

Touting a mobile future dependent on the convergence among traditional computing, connectivity and cloud computing, Google CEO Eric Schmidt also vehemently denied the company plans to reduce operators to little more than "dumb pipes." The executive's comments came during a far-ranging and engaging keynote appearance. Schmidt was quick to shoot down an audience member's assertion that Google's mobile vision does not make sufficient room for its network operator partners: "We feel very strongly that we depend on the successful business of operators globally," he said. "We need advanced, sophisticated networks."

In the hour that followed, he outlined an evolving mobile ecosystem heralded by growing smartphone penetration and accelerating mobile Web adoption - according to Schmidt, more than 60,000 Google Android-based devices now ship each day worldwide, double the number just a quarter earlier. Continued growth depends on the cloud, Schmidt said.

"Applications are sharing-intensive, and the cloud is all about sharing and replication," Schmidt explained. "An application that does not leverage the power of the cloud is not going to wow anybody."
Host everything in the ‘Cloud’ and use three screens ( plus relevant browsers ) to access the application, content, service etc, seemed the Google message. The focus is on digital entertainment nowadays rather than mobile. It will soon be four screens plus the cloud – PC, mobile, TV and Tablet.

To reinforce this message, Schmidt followed this up with an astonishing statement that, from now on, Google would follow a “Mobile First” strategy, by which he means that for every new innovation, service, application or product the company develops, it will launch any new introductions to the mobile platform first. It sounded as if Google is placing mobile ahead of the internet for the new decade and is betting the house on it too.

Clearly, mobile has the potential to change the world far more than the internet ever could! Even Google thinks so. Mobile has the ability to reach three times as many people as the internet; the three most popular services on the internet ( messaging, search and social networking ) are already bigger on mobile now; you can’t do money on the internet but mobile has an almost built in universal currency – credit.

For a really insightful analysis of Google’s plans for mobile, you could do a lot worse than visit the brilliant blog by consultant Tomi Ahonen here: communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/02/what-does-it-mean-to-you-when-google-says-mobile-first-.html. Meanwhile, I look forward to another interesting and amazing year ahead for the mobile industry which seems at last to have emerged from its ‘lost decade’ – somewhere between i-Mode and the iPhone.