That’s Mobile World Congress over for another year. The H+K team was on the ground throughout and as ever enjoyed hearing the latest and greatest from the world’s leading technology innovators.

As we look back at the week that was, we analysed four days worth of online conversations (22nd – 25th) to find out what were the most mentioned topics throughout MWC. We’ve crunched all this data into the word cloud below, which shows the 25 most talked about topics.

So what does this data show us?

“Major players remain dominant”

As we predicated pre-show, the major players remain dominant on the show floor, with all the major consumer brands found in the huge hall 3 of the Gran Fira. We saw new handsets from Samsung and LG, a new AI product from Sony and a move into the rapidly growing 2-in-1 space from Huawei with MateBook.

In fact, according to our data for the first two days of the conference the conversation was dominated by LG, Samsung and Sony.

“Xiaomi – the new kid on the block”

Day three panned out slightly differently. We also asked at the beginning of the show whether or not Xiaomi would make its presence felt in the European market. While it didn’t have a stand at the show, the company did use the show to launch its flagship smartphone, the Mi 5. Looking at the data you can see that the impact of the launch was felt, with Xiaomi creating as much buzz as some of the more established brands. Again, it will be one to watch throughout the year.

“The biggest trend is that it is no longer about the handset.”

Though amongst these top brands at the show, one of the undoubted themes of the show was VR (it appeared predominately in online conversations too). You could get your hands on a VR headset at a vast number of the booths at the show. Samsung and LG went even further with rollercoaster simulators to go with the VR headset. The queues were long and screaming loud. Job done, particularly from Samsung’s point of view.

That said, perhaps to most interesting current use of VR is the HTC Vive, which has built controllers and cameras to work with the headset in a number of applications. We saw lots of people enjoying themselves as they swiped and swooshed in the virtual world. We just hope living rooms are big enough, and the $799 price point bearable enough, for this really to make an impact within consumers’ homes.

To make VR a little more sellable, we also saw a concerted push in 360 cameras, targeting content creators and giving consumers the ability to create their own exciting videos and images. It’s a technology that we see growing in the coming year and one to keep an eye on.

All this leads to the point that it is no longer about the handset. The brands remain but they are building connected ecosystems. Along with its modular smartphone, LG launched a VR headset, VR camera and a robot all run through a mobile, VR generally is a connected peripheral, and the appearance of smartphone controlled pet toys just shows up the trend, at the consumer level, towards mobile led ecosystems becoming the key focus for brands, not just the phone itself.

“Connected. But not just through mobile”

And what about at the operator and telecoms equipment level? 5G was ever present but with few focusing on the pure consumer speed and capacity benefit. Instead they chose to concentrate on its ability to enable smart cities and IoT networks. Building a network is no longer moving data from screen to screen, it’s from car to car, car to building, building to building and building to kettle. It’s not just a mobile world anymore but, if you believe the manufacturers, it’s a world in which everything is connected for the better.

by Magnify Team | February 26, 2016 | posted @ http://www.hkstrategies.com/wrap-up-mobile-world-congress/

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