Even with Samsung sitting on the sidelines at this year’s MWC in Barcelona, you can still expect plenty of phone announcements and networking news.
Mobile World Congress, the phone-focused trade show hosted nearly every year in Barcelona since 2006, kicks off Monday, February 27 and promises to show us a whole lot of stuff—much of which we’ve already seen.
GSMA, the global organization that hosts the trade show, expects about 80,000 attendees to travel to this year’s event, which will take place at the Fira Gran Via. That’s a significant drop from the peak of 109,000 attendees the show saw in 2019, but a solid improvement over the 60,000 who turned up for the 2022 event. GSMA says more than 2,000 vendors will be on hand representing more than 200 countries. The show will host a range of speakers, debates, showcases, and other business-focused gatherings.
Looking at the speaker list, in particular, tells us a lot about what to expect. The highlighted keynote roster is full of top executives from companies such as China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Lockheed Martin, HTC, Maersk, Netflix, Nokia, Telefonica, Vodafone, and others. The bulk of these corps are on the telecommunications and services sides of the mobile phone business, rather than consumer-facing hardware. This means more network news and fewer hardware announcements than what we saw during the show’s heyday, which featured important launches including the Samsung Galaxy S series, the LG G series, Windows Phone, Android 3.
