Trends From The GSMA Mobile World Congress

Rikke Helms, Dexterra's managing director of global sales, provides insights on one of the biggest mobile events of the year.

Ask anyone working in the mobile industry if there's a single "must-attend" industry tradeshow, and they'll almost certainly reply that it's the GSMA's annual Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. Held in February, MWC acts as a useful barometer for the mobile industry as a whole, and interestingly, this year feedback has been mixed, with some industry commentators expressing disappointment at the lack of major innovations on display.

But perhaps in light of the current economic climate this is actually a good thing. After all, of the many end-users facing reduced profits, staff layoffs and uncertain futures, most aren't looking to reinvent the wheel – they're looking for simple, practical communications solutions that will deliver immediate efficiency gains and rapid ROI. This was reflected in the MWC show content, with one key focus area being the need to accelerate time-to-market for new mobile applications in order to better meet these end-user needs. It's clear that Dexterra has a strong story here, in terms of providing off-the-shelf applications to meet demanding companies' day-to-day processes, as well as in its work with carriers such as Vodafone, helping them to develop their own pre-packaged application services.

The mobile applications movement gained great momentum during 2008, and MWC was awash with nifty applications serving different purposes, accompanied by innumerable vendors showcasing their own newly-developed app stores – the majority built upon Apple's standard-bearing revenue model. Perhaps more importantly, the mobile carriers were also talking about applications. There's a consensus now that carriers need to find new uses for their existing networks in order to create additional revenue streams; for many of them, delivering a wider variety of applications will form a key component of this strategy. Consequently, MWC conversations typically revolved around the carriers' need to invest in their own application partners and ecosystems in order to fuel greater innovation and variety, thus equipping them with a competitive offering for all users.

Finally, while consumer-focused, often "'throw away" applications continue to dominate the headlines, we're seeing growing evidence that businesses are starting to get the message about the benefits derived from better enabling their field workforces. Indeed, during the week of MWC, the Financial Times even published a dedicated supplement on business uses of mobility technology, which can be found here: http://www.ft.com/technology/digitalbusiness/february162009.

In conclusion then, this year's MWC was a show about evolution – of networks, devices, applications and business mobility perspectives in general – rather than revolutionary innovations.