MWC 2015 - A Recap of the Key Announcements, Highlights and Trends

MWC 2015
A recap of the key announcements, highlights and trends

The key themes at this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) were
big device launches as usual, the Internet of Things (IoT or Internet
of Everything), wearables, personalised consumer experiences based
on big data, 5G, AdTech, analytics, privacy and security. We also
found some interesting examples of mobile tech that saves lives.
To help you better understand what all of the above will mean to
you and your business we’ve created this summary that covers
everything you need to know from MWC15.

Devices - Samsung
The Samsung Galaxy S6 is as big as it gets for MWC. This is
the equivalent of the iPhone 6 for Samsung and we are not
disappointed. This is big news simply because it looks amazing. The
S6 comes in two versions, one with a “normal” screen and the other
with the Edge screen that has a display that curves around both
sides. However we question if it has much value beyond looks and
fast navigation on the right side menu.
Other highlights of the device includes the new processor by
Samsung, an improved fingerprint reader, payments with LoopPay
and wireless charging.

Devices - Huawei
The 2nd generation of the Talkband, or Talkband B2, looks a lot
slicker than its predecessor and includes a gyroscope improving
movement tracking. It’s not likely to make a big splash in North
America or Europe but it’s interesting to understand what wearables
are trending in China at the moment.
The Huawei Watch on the other hand looks like one of the most
beautifully designed Android Wear devices. This is expected to be
available in about 20 markets from around June-July, so a lot can
happen between now and then.

Devices - HTC & LG
Combining the M7 and M8, the HTC One M9 is the flagship device
from HTC with a new design, processor, 20 megapixel camera,
Dolby Surround sound, integration with various home sound systems
and more. HTC also announced HTC Grip which is HTC’s first
wearable with fitness trackers, GPS, G sensor, Gyro, Compass.
The Grip works with both Android and iOS.
The most exciting news from LG was the Urbane LTE smartwatch
(pictured) - one of the first smartwatches to work standalone without
a smartphone (instead the Urbane relies on a smartwatch connection).
This is another example of how smartwatches and traditional watches
are slowly merging. In addition to this LG announced four new mid-
range smartphones including Magna, Spirit, Leon and Joy.

What this means for you
We are excited about the Samsung S6 and HTC M9 devices. They
have a lot of technology improvements, so in terms of specification
they beat the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. More importantly however they
both focus on the overall customer experience this time which is
great. These are nice come-backs from Samsung and HTC so
expect good sales and customer adaptation.
On the wearable side we liked the looks of several of the new
devices including the Huawei and LG but neither of these will sell
in big volumes in the Americas and Europe. The Apple Watch
outshined all other wearables despite not being launched by the
time of the show. This means that from a brand or start-up point of
view, the Apple Watch is what most developers will target first. And
that’s despite the fact that most Apple Watch functionality is already
supported by Android Wear.

Internet of Things
This year MWC followed on the success of last years ‘Connected
City’ with the Innovation City where IoT was showcased in its four
key themes: Consumer devices/electronics connected to the Internet
at home or anywhere else where they might be useful, connected
cars, connected infrastructure and devices in public spaces and
enterprises and infrastructure solutions to manage connected
devices. Generally most of the exhibitions consisted of the last three
with connected cars from Audi, Porsche and others, examples of
how IoT is used to cut energy costs in connected cities through
smart grids as well as hundreds of companies offering software and
cloud solutions to manage IoT devices. The only exception was the
connected toothbrush from last year’s congress.

Although the Innovation City was a highlight at MWC this year and
had plenty of interesting demos, we can’t help but feel there is
still quite a way to go before the core infrastructure in cities and
companies are connected. The connected home, car and city
are almost a reality, but at the moment the devices are still not
connected to each other in a meaningful or intelligent way. Data
analytics, analysis and AI will play a critical role here.
This will be a gradual process and although there has been progress
since last year, truly smart cities, enterprises and the connected life
is still a few years away. Now is the time to experiment and find ways
for your organization to disrupt your industry.
There was also one area focusing on green mobility with the aim of
reducing environmental impact from transportation, using renewable
energy to power our telecommunication networks and allowing
citizens to better understand and therefore reduce their carbon
dioxide footprint. Entire cities can soon be monitored and systems
set up wirelessly reducing the need for physical infrastructure and
with notable cost and energy savings.

Internet of Things Technologies
ProGlove Smart glove gathering data that helps you work faster and safer
GasLinkA Remote monitoring of tanks and meters for the gas industry
QuakeShare (safety companion) Solution for disaster release in seismic
zones including sensors, relief assistance, satellite images and more
Uniquicom SafeLocator Suite Tracking and positioning of people, vehicles
and assets in- and outdoor, monitoring of works and distributed sensors
Onköl Base station for the home that connects all health devices to
send the data safely to your chosen caregiver
DomoCare Sensors and monitoring to alert caregivers when fragility
has been detected at a seniors’ home
microBSP Remotely controllable medical device that actively diffuses
drugs through the skin

10
There is a myriad of new devices for use in the majority of industries
that can revolutionise monitoring and tracking of people, vehicles
and data. We expect further accelerated growth in this area as new
gadgets can be created through crowdfunding with budgets as small
as 100,000 dollar. Make sure you stay up-to-date with the gadgets,
sensors and devices with potential of impacting your organisation.
Start by testing them in pilots and learn more about how IoT can
help you.
There was a separate event called IoT Stars where start-ups
competed for attention. The speed of innovation and potential
for disruption in this space is staggering.
We will be keeping a close eye on the best and most effective
gadgets and start-ups, providing information on the many use
cases for both industry and commercial use.

Wearables
What excites us most in the wearables section are the specialist
wearable devices such as Garmin for extreme sports or wearables
used within healthcare. A new generation of devices will be able to
track and measure data related to all aspects of health including
hormone levels, glucose and similar blood analytics.
This will be invaluable in presenting an overall representation of
health. It will be particularly useful in the management of conditions
such as diabetes, inflammatory diseases and migraines for example.
Expect lots of development in this space over the next 12 months.

Everybody talks about wearables but few people, even at an industry
event like MWC, is wearing one. All the device manufacturers
have smartwatches and health bands in their stands and there are
also lots of companies that we’ve never heard of before offering
wearables. There was also a dedicated area for wearables this year
which clearly shows the hype. However, the biggest anticipation is
the Apple Watch.
Rather than speculating about the usefulness of wearables get one
or several for yourself and figure out what is useful for you, ask
friends how they use them and do your research on successful
use cases before investing time and money in wearable apps.

Personalised Customer Experiences
Another thing everybody talks about is providing personalised
customer experiences based on big data, but few consumer-oriented
companies actually do it very well (Amazon being the exception).
IBM talks about Watsons, the operators are talking about how their
customer data can be used to personalise experience and target
offers, the telecom network manufacturers are selling these benefits
for the equipment and services while the consultants are talking
about how they can support with the strategy and execution.

This year we will see a lot of successful and unsuccessful show
cases of personalised experiences delivered in-store, on the move
and in our homes. Based on our experience this will require a lot
of testing, optimization and time to perfect. On wearables and
smartwatches this will be particularly important with the small
screen as the content needs to be relevant.

5G
At the moment 5G is only conceptually specified but everyone wants
to leverage the marketing buzz of 5G. The only thing all the vendors
and operators seem to agree on is that we need better and deeper
network coverage, more bandwidth, support for an exponential
increase in devices, better utilisation of spectrum and lower latency.
And hopefully that’s exactly what 5G will do.

Unless you’re a network telecommunication provider, don’t worry
too much. 5G is expected to launch around 2020 and we will see at
least another 10 years for 4G/LTE to continue to improve and serve
our needs.

Adtech & Analytics
Last year the growth in mobile advertising was close to 100%, but
advertising spend is still far behind compared to the increased time
people spend on their mobiles. When companies do spend money
on mobile advertising however, they want to make sure they are
getting return on their investment. The result of this could be seen at
this year’s MWC with more and more specialized analytics providers.
We thought that this sector had reached is peak, but it’s continuing
to develop with the help of more niche analytics tools. Additionally,
SK Telecom showed off interactive billboards that can change
content based on the audience in front of it. This has the potential
of changing the whole way ad targeting in a physical space looks
like today.

This is an incredibly exciting space and expect to see even more
advancements and innovative solutions throughout the year. We
expect ad spend to gradually match the time consumers spend on
mobile with more detailed analytics being developed to cater for
this growing market. Highly targeted media will be used to reach
consumers and if done right, this could potentially change the whole
way ad targeting in a digital as well as physical space look like over
the next year.
Re-evaluate the ad networks and tools that you are using today
because the technology is rapidly development and so is the ROI.
Companies like Adjust, Localytics, Swrl and Kochava that no one
had heard about two years ago are now starting to pay key roles in
this space.

Security & Privacy
Every company would like to give their employees access to
company data, but they are concerned about the security when
opening up for use of company platforms. The companies that
give access often add such a high number of authentication layers
that it soon becomes impossible to use. We discovered some new
technologies that could help you get around this. A great example
was a new form of eye recognition (not using the iris this time, but
the blood veins in your eye) which only required a 1 megapixel
camera to work. Interesting for banks and other entities that require
a high level of security and is operating all around the world, serving
employees and clients with shifting maturity levels when it comes
to devices.

Security & Privacy (continued)
As for privacy, we were constantly tracked via the MWC event app
while on the show room floor. The MWC organizer can presumably
pinpoint your location down to 3-5 meters. In theory they will be
able to see how each visitor using the app is moving around, how
much time s/he spends at each stand or the time it takes you to
finish the sandwich you had for lunch. Whether this is a good or bad
thing we’ll leave unsaid for now. Hopefully the data collected can be
leveraged to create an even richer event experience next year!
And with congress visitors being concerned about using the public
wifi, companies like MYMobileSecurity (disclaimer: DMI client) offered
solutions that helped protect your device from malware attacks.

With more and more data being collected about us, we are entering
unchartered territory in terms of privacy. Measures must be taken to
ensure that user data is collected with prior consent and not used
for anything other than the original purpose. However, security must
also be of the highest concern in both enterprise and consumer
data access. With the recent high-profile security breaches, this
need has been highlighted time and time again. Privacy and Security
professionals are already looking in the best way of balancing the
need for data collection and allowing for an adequate level of privacy.
The difficulty will be in devising regulations that truly safeguard users
in all situations. However, with the dominant enterprise mobility
theme being data security and privacy, there will surely be a lot more
happening in this part of the mobile industry this year.

Mobile Technology That Saves Lives
Finally, we also came across some technology which clearly shows
the power of mobility in all areas, including where lives are in danger.
Global Warning System (GWS) Ever thought about what to do or
where to go if a major incident such as an earthquake, tsunami,
war, riot or toxic leak happens while you’re travelling? GWS is an
add-on to your travel insurance that uses mobile technology to
warn you if something happens in the vicinity (city or country) of
where you are and provides localized advise on what to do including
recommendations on hospitals and how to get out of the country.
Where do we sign up?

Mobile Technology That Saves Lives (continued)
Man Down A little bit of self-promotion as DMI demonstrated a “Man
Down” solution as part of our innovation lab. This solution monitors
field workers, government personnel, security personnel and people
in dangerous environments or under threat and provides an alert to a
central monitor center in case anything happens that might pose a
risk or if the person falls. The system automatically asks the person
to confirm if OK using secure biometrics (voice, finger print and eye
scanner) and if there is no response it alerts the appropriate authority
to the location. The solution works with smartphones as well as
wearables and sensors.

In summary we think this was the best and most exciting Mobile
World Congress to date. The event proved that it plays a critical role
in bringing people together across industries to discuss, experience
and influence the future of mobile technology. It also showed how
mobility is transforming every industry, our infrastructure, society and
our daily lives. We can’t wait until 2016!
Let us know if we missed anything from the event that was important
to you? Key trends, technologies or companies.
Also, don’t miss out on reading our 2015 mobile trends report and
other trend updates from the mobile industry.

Fighting for a world
full of mobile solutions
since 2005
web www.goldengekko.com
email info@goldengekko.com

MWC 2015 - A Recap of the Key Announcements, Highlights and Trends

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MWC 2015 - A Recap of the Key Announcements, Highlights and Trends