Perspectives on Mobile World Congress 2014
It’s late February, the sky is blue, the sun is shining, and the locals are friendly. Clearly I am not in my native London; but in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress.
This event grows in size every year, with over 75,000 executives attending this time around. It takes a serious venue to accommodate an event of this scale, and the Fira Gran Via is enormously impressive, and a reminder – if it were needed – as to how modern and progressive the city of Barcelona is.
This year, the show was neatly ‘bookended’ with significant industry news:
- With impeccable timing, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion on the eve of the event, just in time for Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote address to conference on Monday evening. Some say this acquisition is evidence of a bubble, whilst others suggest it is a strategic masterstroke. My own view is that technology sector history clearly demonstrates that market leaders can – and do – very quickly become market laggards (or even worse). Social media is likely to be more susceptible than most to this trend because of the vagaries of fashion inherent in social (just ask Bebo or MySpace), and one has to admire the courage of Zuckerberg’s conviction in placing this particular bet. If Zuckerberg wants career longevity, he will have to continually reinvent himself and Facebook in much the same way as Steve Jobs did at Apple.
- The week after the show, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s former CEO, admitted at an event at Oxford University that Microsoft had not adapted adequately enough to the computing industry’s evolution to mobility. Now this strategic shift was revolution rather than evolution: one minute the talk was of Symbian and Microsoft. Within 24 months, Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS were really the only games in town (for now at least). Nevertheless, it was an extraordinarily frank admission for Ballmer to have made.
As for the event itself, it was intense. I squeezed in over 30 meetings in 4 days.
Interestingly, Eastern Europe as an area of geographic opportunity – and therefore expansion – is very much back on the agenda for a number of organisations I met at the show.
Apps have a strong and rapidly growing presence at MWC, and a lot of the event’s manic energy was focussed in the Applications hall. There were a lot of mobile payment and mobile wallet plays in evidence. This particular market requires monster scale, so I’d expect to see some real consolidation here in the future.
Samsung and Huawei both had an enormous presence in the main halls. Of the two, I preferred Huawei: I liked the way they ‘show reeled’ the highlights of presentations given by the CEO and by the EVP of their Consumer Business Group, as well as by their CMO. In so doing, they delivered the human face to what is a large multinational, and of course it’s always great to see very top executives doing ‘the hard yards’. Huawei is a challenger brand in the consumer market, and they are clearly going for it (and their 2013 results suggest they are outperforming).
A couple of companies particularly caught my eye. I’d heard of neither previously, but they are innovative and were beautifully marketed at the show. As a result, their stands were very busy:
- I-New is a German company that provides ’MVNO in a box’ solutions. Their stand was packed, their marketing messages were simple and strong, and they were the only company in their Hall to have an overhead banner: meaning one could look-up and easily find them amongst the throng. Simple! Check out I-New.
- Golla – Generation Mobile is a Finnish company. Their stand position was perfect, and their products were nicely displayed. Golla is an accessories company, with very, very nice product design and construction quality. Unfortunately, their ‘Air’ and ‘Road’ product lines are not yet available to buy, and not even on their website. However, their products are so good, that I’ll be checking their website again in 3 months, at Golla.
In terms of innovation, for me, Telefonica’s Wayra programme stands out. Wayra places a lot of small bets on start-ups it likes, and it does this worldwide. What I learnt at MWC is that Telefonica now offers ‘Wayra-as-a-Service’ to other multinationals keen to benefit from it’s approach to innovation. In the UK, British Gas has signed-up. This level of corporate innovation is encouraging, and of course, having a top tier corporate backer of your start-up can only be a positive endorsement of its potential. This model looks like a win : win.
In the very brief interludes between meetings, I thought I’d take a look at some companies I’ve invested in. Of these, Globo was unfortunately a real disappointment. The company has a lot going for it – including market timing – but looking at their stand one could be forgiven for asking “what do these guys do (and why should I care)”? Globo looked like a company that agreed internally six months ago that it had to be at MWC, and then did nothing to prepare. Unfortunately, too many companies at MWC seem to have taken this approach judging by their stands.
Globo’s shares were aggressively shorted last year, and the share price also took another post MWC 2014 hit when the company belatedly announced it had sacked its auditor, BDO. If I was as brave as Zuckerberg I might now view this as ‘a buying opportunity’….!
So, where does Mobile World Congress go from here? Even bigger, I suspect. I personally think the focus now should be on quality rather than quantity. It would be good to see a much more visible presence from the mobile network operators; they are still part of the ecosystem after all. I’d also like to see Google and Apple more prominent. I didn’t see BlackBerry anywhere: have they given-up? This show is huge, and virtually everyone moans about the cost of exhibiting. It is run by the GSM Association, which is a vibrant commercial beast in its own right, but to be a really good show all the key players need to be here. There were many very small companies that had invested a great deal in exhibiting at MWC, and I fear for some of them. That said, I, like the majority, will be back for more again next year.