Mobile Internet and broadband will dominate this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona
Posted by Mark Newman
February 8th, 2008
Flush from the success of mobile broadband (HSPA) USB modem sales, mobile operators and device manufacturers will be demonstrating new handsets and faster speeds at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Most HS(D)PA traffic is being generated by laptops, but mobile device vendors will be showcasing new form factors and user interfaces that bring the Internet onto the mobile phone.
Over the last 12 months the mobile industry has started to believe that the Internet is the next killer application for the mobile phone. Network speeds are now fast enough to give an experience that compares favourably with consumer DSL. ‘Operators have made the bold and sensible move towards flat-rate pricing so it is now up to the handset manufacturers to develop user interfaces that make the Internet a good experience on a mobile phone’ says Mark Newman, Chief Research Officer at Informa Telecoms & Media. ‘UI will be a big theme at this year’s show along with new devices that sit somewhere between a laptop and a mobile phone’, he adds.
Having accepted that the Internet holds the key to the future of the mobile business the industry now needs to create a fertile, open environment for the creation of new applications. The fragmented approach towards mobile operating systems is a major barrier and the support for open source has started to gain serious momentum. Further support for open source can be expected in Barcelona.
Monetizing the mobile Internet is going to be as big a challenge as creating the right user interfaces. The industry has higher hopes of mobile advertising but – as became clear from discussions at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month – a business model still needs to be developed. Different approaches and business models around mobile advertising – location-based advertising for example - will be on display on the show floor. New initiatives from leading global Internet and media brands can be expected in Barcelona.
With the rapid take-up of mobile broadband services mobile operators are having to start thinking about how to route traffic to and from the Internet without putting undue pressure on their capex budgets. Cellular backhaul has become a major challenge for operators and a number of different solutions are being explored. Even femtocells are being touted as a potential solution. Last February saw the first demonstrations of femtocell technology and this time we can expect femtocells to become one of the core product offerings of the large infrastructure vendors. With the benefit of femtocell technology we expect to see mobile operators pushing more aggressively into the connected home and enterprise space.
One of the big themes of last year’s show was the supposed time to market advantage of mobile WiMAX over 3G LTE – the next-generation of cellular networks. A number of vendors at this year’s event will try to demonstrate that LTE is getting close. We expect plenty of LTE demos on both FDD and TDD. However, vendors in both camps face the challenge of demonstrating that the two technologies – both of which require new network builds – offer enough benefits over HSPA to justify operator investments.
-
Click here for Informa Telecoms & Media’s Need to Know guide, a resource for journalists attending Mobile World Congress 2008
This invaluable guide includes:
- Data and statistics on the global mobile markets
- Details of where to find us, and speak with our analysts attending the event
