The Mobile World Congress (MWC) said goodbye this Thursday with a clear message of recovery. He technology congress held this week between Barcelona and Hospitalet de Llobregat has exceeded all expectations and has welcomed more than 60,000 attendees from 200 countries, a figure that despite being far from the pre-pandemic era shows an upward trend after two years most affected by the health crisis of the covid. “It’s been exciting to bring our community together, so passionate about connectivity, back together to discuss the opportunities that lie ahead,” he said. John HoffmanCEO of the GSMAorganizer of the fair.
This recovery has also been noticed in the corridors of the Gran Via de Fira de Barcelona, where Mobile has occupied seven of the eight pavilions, a notorious expansion over last year. More than 1,900 companies from up to 160 countries have been exhibited, and only those from powers such as China and Japan have been unable to attend in person due to mobility restrictions imposed on their countries by the United States. pandemic.
In addition to the on-site attendees, Mobile’s talks and debates have brought together more than 500,000 unique daily viewers in its ‘online’ broadcast. Of the 1,000 speakers who participated in the congress only 36% were womena lack of parity deeply rooted in the technology industry and one of the challenges for future editions. At the start of this, the organization estimated the impact of the congress on the territory at about 240 million euros and the creation of about 6,700 part-time jobs, figures that the GSMA will confirm in the coming days.
Technological trends
The progress of Mobile as a global technology showcase was cut short in 2020 with the emergence of the coronavirus, which forced its cancellation. In last year’s edition, in 2019, the fair had gathered 109,000 people, its historical record. After the pandemic, the GSMA opted in 2021 for a hybrid format that allowed the participation of 30,000 attendees.
Beyond embarking on a path to recovery towards pre-pandemic normalcy, the MWC ending this Thursday has been marked by expanding sectors of the industry such as 5G connectivity and roboticsmobile telephony, the artificial intelligence i la cloud computing and other more popular trends such as virtual reality i la underground economy.
Boost for start-ups
While last year the 4 Years From Now (4YFN) was one of the main attractions of the congress (it was the first time it was held in the same facilities), the widespread movement of people in the seven pavilions occupied by this year’s Mobile have turned the hall of the start-ups in one more attraction. No less successful: the event was celebrating its eighth edition this year, and in line with the good times of the Barcelona ecosystem in particular and Europe in general, it was already doing so with figures similar to those before the pandemic. .
600 companies have exhibited (80% of those that participated in the 2019 edition), almost half of them outside Spain and in a space even a little bigger than then. In the four days that the show has been running, there have been mainly ‘start-ups’ software developers, and with solutions for the health sector, mobility and smart cities and education. The congress also highlighted the desire to invest and finance start-ups, that ‘unicorn’ companies – technologies valued at more than a billion dollars – are on all radars and that the challenges of the fabric they are more social than technological.
“There will be a lot of talk about technological humanism: what is the purpose of technology and its impact on society,” he anticipated days before starting, in a conversation with El Periódico, the general director of 4YFN, Pere Duran. “We are closing a very intense Mobile, at the height of the big editions, with two indisputable protagonists: 5G connectivity and, above all, the humanistic vision of technology”, agreed the CEO of the Mobile World Capital Foundation. Carles Grauin the closing balance sheet.