Not much ado about nothing
For once the reporting community is remarkably consistent: there was nothing exciting at MWC last week, but overall the event was much more serious. By serious I mean that the people you spoke to might actually do something, unlike previous years where it was substantially a fishing trip.
Last year we were on the Scottish stand on the upper floor of Hall 2 in a very mixed area: antennae mixed with software which jostled with components. This year we were in Hall 7 and the flow rates of people were very different. We were constantly busy from about 9.30am to close, with no long quiet periods as we had seen in Hall 2.2. And the people we spoke to were generally interested, to be qualified of course, or else disengaged politely if it was not of interest.
From our point of view, last year was the year of being asked about mobile internet. The year before, 2006, had been largely blank faces as we talked about mobile advertising and application delivery. This year it was all about applications and provisioning, an area we’ve been automating since 2004.
We also got good reactions to our non-banner advertising capability, offering much greater creative options, including special iPhone ad units that we were showing off. More on that soon.
The other trend that I noticed was more ties. I’m convinced that more people were wearing ties this year. Is this a sign of a maturing market or economic tough times? Either way I’m not joining that trend.
Another sad trend was the increase in crime - we had a bizarre incident of stuff being taken from our flat and then returned after some vigourous phoning to agent and owner. Clearly a scam. Anybody else who saw this happen please get in touch. Some of the team also had a attempted theft/mugging at 8pm, although they scared off the perpetrators. This is the first year we’ve experienced this. Sad. Puts you off visiting.
Equally annoying were the organisers who moved our stand without warning to an enclosed space from an open-ended one. We found out late last week by checking the website - too late to rework our stand artwork. And our internet connection, which we had ordered, was not connected. It took six hours of complaining to get the internet connected. Nothing to be done about the stand, but the level of “customer service” from the GSMA was attrocious. We were not alone in this - the UK Trade and Industry cabin had been placed 20m away from the site where they had paid a premium to be. Does it have to be this difficult?
I’ve put a selection of photos of the show on Flickr, and as one wag has commented on MoMo, as usual there are more pictures of the CBoss dancers than of any handsets. I would have taken a picture of the LG Watch Phone if it had been allowed, as it was the only hardware of note at the event. And it doesn’t have a browser or Java so ever it’s not that interesting. I’m sure it will be upgraded soon - and couldn’t it use traditional automatic watch winders to charge up?
