May 2, 2012

Insights from Mobile World Congress - The Only List You Need!

As you know, I attended Mobile World Congress 2012 back in February.  Here are some insights I took away from the conference!

The smartphone experience is continuity and engagement 
The mobile pervasiveness is marching on. From keynotes to demonstrations, the pattern emerging for brands and winning products is becoming clearer and clearer. The mobile is with you all the time and it's a great weapon to connect the dots of what is going on in your life - it's a continuity engine. The next thing it does very well is engage the user in context where no engagement was possible before - get ready to experience the world like no man has experienced it before! 

The ecosystems battle royale 
Is there really a battle there between iOS, Android, Windows Phone and soon BB10. At the show, Android was the big gorilla and iOS was the big elephant nowhere to be seen. The contenders, Microsoft and RIM, need to cook something special up to make themselves contenders again. Carriers have been neglected by Apple and Google. We can expect to see Microsoft and RIM play that card strongly.  By showing more love to the carriers and helping them become relevant again, they provide the carriers with a huge incentive to move RIM and MS products in front of customers. 

Cars + Connectivity is the new mobile
The car a 100 years ago was the first mobility play. Ford believes the combination of car + telecom is the new mobile. For a car company to be one of the keynote they must really believe that story. The middle class in emerging countries wants their own car and the freedom that comes with it. To Ford this has huge repercussions on the environment and city traffic, parking etc. that only the connected cars can address. We saw the RIM Porsche, the MS Sync Ford car, and the connected home concept integrating the car into the overall picture. Today is about entertainment, but already cars on our roads have more than 1million lines of code embedded in them so we will be getting a lot more than entertainment soon. 

Healthcare is a two headed beast depending on where  you live
The problems we have to address in the developed world are very different from those we have to address in the emerging world. The developed world is about efficiencies to reduce the costs. The emerging world is about access to the services for the population. During the talks it became clear that it's not the same innovation that is required to save people's lives depending on where you live. The realities of the emerging world are just very different than ours. As a vendor of solutions in the health space, insight based solutions design is essential for success.  

It's a world of BigData more than ever
It's the voluntary data we provide the applications on our phone, it's the phone collecting information for us, it's all the sensors that are also collecting data about us and it's the machine to machine data we're starting to see. The opportunity is making sense of the data in the moment. It's building the intelligence to factor in the context and combining it with past data to make predictions, and then presenting the information so that decisions can be made in the moment.

1b smartphones, 7b people on the planet - it's only getting started 
This is a quote from Eric Schmidt during his keynote. I highly encourage you to view it ( Eric Schmidt's MWC keynote on YouTube ). It puts things in perspective as far as how far along the mobile revolution really is. Lots of people during the conference, including Eric Schmidt, called for cheap smartphones. The word on the street is we're about 18months away from a $120 smartphone. Carriers in emerging markets are calling for $70 smartphones in order to gain serious penetration. Huge challenges remain for accessibility, and one huge opportunity.