July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Yesterday was an interesting day for me at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. As always the sheer size of this event is somewhat overwhelming, however there is no better place to see what the future of the mobile industry holds.

One thing that really stood out on day one is that Samsung, which has one of the largest stands here by far, has chosen not to launch its flagship product for the year, the Galaxy S4. Instead the company opted to use social media to announce that the S4 will be unveiled to the world at a special event in New York on March 14 (which will also be streamed online). This is one of the clearest indications yet that the center of the mobile industry has seen a shift from Europe to North America.

Traditionally MWC, and Europe in general, was the dominant market for mobile innovation. Major companies such as Nokia, Ericsson and Vodafone have long held the power and driven industry innovation.

Now the power has shifted to the U.S.. Apple and Google are the leading players in the mobile market with their superiority rooted in software for smartphones. For competitors to rival these big players, they need to be seen on the other side of the Atlantic in Apple and Google’s domestic market. This is without doubt part of Samsung’s rationale for launching the S4 in New York.

However this transfer in epicenter does not mean that the European mobile market has died. In fact, the shift has given rise to a new, thriving market for app development. In the UK in particular the market for mobile app developers, building new products for smartphones, is producing some genuinely brilliant businesses, which are catching the eyes of investors. A great example of this is SwiftKey, which topped the Google Play paid app charts for more days than any other app in 2012.

An example of how the app market has developed in the UK is the Smart UK Project, a competition run by the UK Trade & Investment, which held the final of its contest today here at MWC.

Beginning with 70 UK based mobile companies, a shortlist of 20 was selected and this was then reduced again to five, who had the privilege of presenting to a panel of six judges at the show, of which I was one.

This year’s winner, OpenSignal, is a brilliantly innovative app that can help users to understand the quality of the network coverage they have in any given region. Despite fierce competition, OpenSignal has really wowed the judges with its innovation and practical application. Knowing which mobile network operator best covers where you live is an attractive proposition for consumers and will certainly increase competition among operators.

There has been a clear shift in where the mobile industry considers its main market to be, representing a change in business strategies for handset manufacturers and telcos. This has given rise to new business and investment opportunities, especially in the burgeoning app market. As always, the UK finds itself a hotbed of innovation and creativity and with competitions such as the Smart UK Project, investors don’t have to look far to find their next opportunity.

Frederic Lardieg is a principal at Octopus Ventures. You can follow him on Twitter at @FredLardieg.

Photo: MozillaEU/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

[This is the latest installment of Jonathan Goldberg's MWC 2013 travelogue. We're hoping he won't be too exhausted to file another news-filled post tomorrow. --Ed.]

Tonight is the Night of Parties. Twitter, Nokia, Ericsson, Andreessen Horowitz, and a few others hosted after-hours events today. Last year, Google won the best event title by general acclaim. This year they did another great event, but word on the street is that Air Watch had the real blow-out. The array of choices is overwhelming.

All this makes for some late nights.

The show officially closes at 7 p.m. But many companies host cocktails starting at 5 or 6. Getting out of the Fira conference center can take an hour.

Then, people in Barcelona eat dinner late. Exceptions are made for all these strange foreigners, but most of the year if you go into a restaurant at 8 p.m. you’ll qualify for the Early Bird discount — and that’s if the restaurant is even open yet.

See where this is going?

8 p.m. is too early for dinner. So a lot of times people hold a business meeting over drinks. Then a business dinner at 10. Swing by the “Bubble over Barcelona” party after that. The first live music act at the Google party goes on at 10:30. And the club is open until 2:30.

At this point, you have to be careful. If you still have any charge left in your phone, you may get a text from a friend. And if they’re Nokia employees they probably have a table at a nice lounge with a cold bottle of vodka and good champagne.

By this point transit is hard to come by.

And it is probably around this time you remind yourself that next year you really, really should not schedule any 8 a.m. breakfast meetings.

Buenas Noches, Barcelona.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Photo credit: VentureBeat/Jonathan Goldberg

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Last week we suggested a few things to keep an eye out for at Mobile World Congress, and last night we had our first sighting.

Mozilla announced a greatly expanded line-up for its Firefox OS. Firefox OS, or FOS, is interesting because it is entirely ‘web-based,’ meaning the average HTML-literate web developer can write an app for the system. Many developers (and carriers) see this as somewhat of a holy grail, the ultimate end game of all the mobile operating system platform wars.

Creating great mobile experiences in a world of OS fragmentation is one of the major themes of VentureBeat’s invitation-only Mobile Summit, which is only six weeks away (April 1-2 in Sausalito, Calif.). Read more about the Mobile Summit themes.

Firefox will not bring an end to the platform wars, but it is a step in that direction. In our post last week, we told you to keep an eye out for new hardware partners and new carriers. And at its press event yesterday, Mozilla delivered both. They now have three hardware partners including TCL (aka Alcatel), LG Electronics, and ZTE. That’s a good start, with devices shipping ‘this summer.’

Mozilla also announced 17 carrier partners, and this is probably far more important. Telefonica was already on board, having been the first to announce Firefox OS support last year. Added to this were America Movil, Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, Hutchison, KDDI, KT, MegaFon, Smart, SIngTel, Sprint, Vimplecom, and a few more.

You may not recognize some of the names on this list, and that’s because Firefox OS is targeting carriers in emerging markets. But Mozilla ha now lined up something like 17 of the top 30 carriers globally. This is a pretty serious list.

So far so good. There is still a lot we don’t know about Firefox OS, and it is still largely untested in the marketplace. But last night annoucement shows the company has made considerable progress.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

It’s been a long day of traveling, but a sunny day in Barcelona can lift a lot of spirits.

I’m heading to Mobile World Congress. This is one of my favorite weeks of the year. MWC is still an important conference (I’m thinking of you CES), and Barcelona is a great city.

I’ll be posting on industry events during the coming week, but I also hope to capture a little bit of the experience beyond the press releases, demos and meetings. Think of this as a guide for planning your trip next year.

The first thing to know about MWC is that the show is big. Something like 70,000 people attended last year, and it creates a sense that foreigners are overrunning the city. That started at the airport when I was departing the U.S. When they called boarding for “Executive Platinum” cardholders, 100 people rushed the podium. The hard-core road warriors were migrating.

This year MWC is at a new venue. Barcelona has great mass transit. But on Sunday the metro was empty except for the line heading out to the Fira, the conference venue. That platform was crowded with people who exuded “telecom.” And I saw two friends in line.

Moving the show to the new venue has caused all kinds of consternation among long-time attedess. Everyone remembers last year’s transit strike, and the Fira Europa is in a remote location. The old venue was in the middle of town, and very compact. No meeting was more than a 5 minute walk from the next meeting. The new site is much bigger, which is why they moved it. Still, any gathering of attendees (for instance in the waiting lounge of the airport for a five-hour delayed flight) will eventually have someone fretting about the new locale. A good cure for this is to say, “I remember when the show was in Cannes 10 years ago. They never had enough hotel rooms, and we had to rent a car and drive an hour each way.”

Personally, I think all this anxiety about the new venue stems from something deeper. Five years ago, this was a telecom conference. The big exhibitors made switches, antennas, signalling sytems, testing boxes, subscriber databases, and microwave radios.

Today, half the show is apps, mobile software, and tools for making apps and mobile software. This conference literally used to be filled with men with grey beards. The grey beards are now in a shrinking minority, and no one is quite sure what that means. It’s a new industry.

Regardless, registration is now much easier. Its a sunny day in Barcelona. And now it’s time for sangria and paella.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Photo credit: VentureBeat/Jonathan Goldberg

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

1) The Mobile Experience

In this theme, we’re looking at the intersection of design and technology. Smartphone hardware is starting to all look alike. So increasingly the only way to stand out is through building a better user experience. The platform wars are now a race to find new ways to people to interact with their devices. Look for advances in voice control, gesture recognition, contextual awareness and smart design.

Look for news from some of the smaller players. In particular, we are watching to see if Firefox Mobile gets traction at other carriers and handset makers. Same goes for Microsoft. Bonus points if you can spot any Apple employees walking the show floor.

This is not a big show for ad network news, but we will be looking for movement from the carriers. Who is partnering with whom? And which carriers are going to try and go it alone?

We anticipate a lot of new mobile payment schemes. Some more workable than others. We would also watch for new ways to use NFC chips in phones. Many think that we need to have these in devices for mobile payments to take off, but we will probably see NFC chips used for things other than payments first.

Expect all the big equipment vendors to showcase their small cell solutions. Alcatel, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, and ZTE will probably all have something to say. But also keep an eye out for smaller companies like Accedian and Spider Cloud who are driving much of the innovation in the space.

We expect all the chip companies will announce something about LTE product launches (some have already done so). But watch the details. When will these chips actually ship as opposed to ‘sample’?

MWC tends to be a carrier-heavy show, and we expect to see digital living rooms built around carrier plans. More interesting may be other sensor networks and “M2M” (machine to machine) systems.

With software companies taking a growing share of the show’s square footage, you should look to startups like Apperian, AirWatch, and Enterproid as well as stalwarts like Good Technology and Mobile Iron for interesting news here.

Photo via Christine und Hagen Graf/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Not content with Apple’s iPhone 5 hogging the limelight, Samsung is announcing some smartphone plans of its own.

The company intends to announce its next flagship phone, the Galaxy S 4, at Mobile World Congress next February. (Samsung announced the Galaxy S II at the same event in 2011.)

The news comes via The Korea Times, which spoke to both parts suppliers and unnamed Samsung officials. If true, the report means that Samsung’s next Galaxy smartphone will come just nine months after it announced its previous one, the Galaxy S III.

Unlike Apple, however, Samsung doesn’t appear to be on a 12-month release cycle. After all, it played a similar game with the Galaxy Note 2, which was announced last month. Revealed last October, the original Galaxy Note didn’t get a North American release until January of this year.

That the Galaxy S 4 announcement comes so soon after the announcement of the iPhone 5 suggests only one thing: Samsung wants to cool off some of the hype surrounding Apple’s latest phone, and announcing a rival device is probably the best way to do that.

We’ve reached out to Samsung for comment and will update this story when the company responds.