MWC Day 1 – The time machine

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The taxonomy of MWC is changing

• Nokia has through nostalgia has created some excitement in the mobile phone industry but elsewhere the signs of maturity are everywhere.
• The notable fall out coming from Microsoft, Blackberry, Huawei amoung others who have substantially reduced the sizes of their stands has been replaced with:
  • First: Automakers who outside of BMW still seem to be a little unsure of what they are doing at this show.
  • They have realised that mobile holds the key to preventing them from becoming Android handsets on wheels but are very uncertain how they intend to address this problem.
  • I think that Tesla has a very good idea of what it is doing in this space and consequently does not feel that it needs to be here.
  • Second: An endless list of handset brands who are all selling almost exactly the same device where the proposition is very unclear.
  • Two exceptions are Wiko and LeEco who are at least trying to offer points of differentiation on the device even if they are having a very hard time doing so.
  • Condor from Algeria and Accent from Morocco are doing stock Android but are attempting to achieve some differentiation by focusing on their respective regions.
• Furthermore, the app industry, largely present in Hall 8,8.1 and the hallways, has moved into a new phase of development.
• Gone are the heady days of 2015 when it was all a out adding users at any cost.
• Now the focus is clearly on engagement, analytics and monetization.
• Developed markets are pretty much saturated from a user perspective meaning that how to delight those users and making sure that they stay engaged is of paramount importance.
• Consequently, the suit count in Hall 8.1 has gone up substantially as has the size of the average stand.
• This implies that many of the smaller, ineffective players have been weeded out leaving the bigger players who have much larger marketing budgets.
• Consequently MWC has revealed an industry that looks very mature (just like it did in 2005) but this time I can’t see anything on the horizon to upset the status quo.
• I continue to prefer the ecosystems over the handset and PC makers in general as they, at least, have a way to differentiate