The Mobile World Fair (MWC), a flagship event for the telecoms sector, starts Monday in Barcelona in a large format version, at a time when smartphone sales are running out of steam.
The Mobile World Fair (MWC), a key event in the telecoms sector, opens this Monday in Barcelona. For four days, 80,000 professionals will walk the aisles of this annual high mass of connected services, according to the World Association of Telecom Operators (GSMA), which has been organizing the event since 2006 in the Catalan capital. This attendance remains far from the 2019 record, when nearly 110,000 people made the trip, but up by a third of the 60,000 visitors to the 2022 edition, which had been affected by the persistence of the restrictions introduced in the face of the Covid-19.
“We are on the way” to a return to normal, assured GSMA executive director John Hoffman at a press conference. A dynamic linked, according to him, to the strong comeback of Chinese groups following the reopening of the borders announced at the end of December by Beijing.
According to this organization, which brings together nearly 750 operators and manufacturers in the telecoms sector, 2,000 exhibitors will be present at the show this year. For the first time since the start of the pandemic, all eight MWC pavilions will be occupied. Among the companies expected are telephony giants (Nokia, Samsung, Xiaomi, Orange, Vodafone, etc.) but also “tech” and industrial heavyweights, such as Qualcomm, Airbus and Microsoft, the MWC having expanded for several years its audience.
This 17th edition of the show comes in a difficult context for the smartphone industry, whose sales fell by 11.3% in 2022 to 1.21 billion units – the “lowest number since 2013”, according to the specialized firm IDC.
“The market suffered a lot last year,” said Thomas Husson, analyst at Forrester, for whom “all manufacturers” saw their sales “erode”, although to “various degrees”. In question: the climate of uncertainty born of the war in Ukraine and the outbreak of inflation, which weighed on purchasing power, but also more structural factors. “In certain regions such as Western Europe, the individual equipment rate is around 90%: we are therefore in mature markets.
And the renewal rate is getting longer because people keep their phones longer,” said Thomas Husson.
Added to this situation is a generally gloomy context for “tech”, following the waves of job cuts announced in recent weeks by the giants of the sector, like Alphabet, Meta, Dell, Microsoft and Amazon. “The macroeconomic climate” will inevitably “cast a shadow over the show”, estimates Ben Wood, analyst at CCS Insight, for whom “the emphasis will be placed on the need to get through” this difficult period as well as possible “, by projecting on “the return to growth”.
The future on the menu
The themes highlighted by this 17th edition are in fact resolutely turned towards the future, between “artificial intelligence”, “cloud of the future”, “metaverse”, “transformation of networks” and discussions on “6G” .
On the product side, few new models should be unveiled, with manufacturers now preferring to make their announcements at dedicated events. But the gadgets and innovations should like every year attract attention.
There should be a lot of talk regarding “energy savings” and “initiatives to reduce environmental impact”, but also regarding “satellite messaging” and the “benefits that artificial intelligence can bring”, anticipates Ben Wood. Beyond the innovations, the Barcelona show will be an opportunity to see “how the various manufacturers” position themselves vis-à-vis “market trends” and seek to “manage their game” in the face of the slowdown sales, insists Thomas Husson.
This year once more, the biggest exhibitor will be Huawei: a figurehead of Chinese telecoms, it will have an area of 11,000 m2, a record in the history of the show, according to the GSMA.
The opportunity for this equipment giant to display its capacity for “resilience in the face of American sanctions”, which have greatly weakened its telephone branch, underlines Thomas Husson.