At last, the Mobile World Congress (MWC) – the world’s largest exhibition for the mobile industry – is moving back to its origins. 5G technology has been a star in this year’s conference and I must say that it still has almost the same number of defenders as detractors. Opinions from both sides – the proponents and the critics – have been heard this week in Barcelona and while in the middle I have adopted an easy and not very brave opinion on this aspect. I still think that 5G can bring great advances in many sectors such as healthcare or transport, but contrary to this I don’t think that we will be using 5G in Virtual Reality multi-player games. That’s like, too much investment for a few general use cases of the technology.
I went to Barcelona to discover about happenings on the Internet of Things (IoT), start-ups and to discuss advances on IoT strategies with Operators, Manufacturers and System Integrators who were present at this Congress.
The gist of my visit at the end of my three days time and impressive 70,000 steps on my Fitbit tracker, is that the role of IoT at MWC has been diluted. A couple of years ago almost all the exhibitors used the word IoT on their stalls, many without knowing anything about what it was and today, it hardly appears on a few. There are no longer innovations, nor new use cases that attract visitors.
IoT and Operators
In the long-wait of 5G, IoT operators are torn between several technologies such as NB-IoT or LTE-M o LPWAN networks. The LoRA alliance had a booth in Hall #8 (the Hall of the poor’s, I call this Hall). SigFox did not even attend this year’s conference, which further increased the rumors among the attendees on the possible precarious situation of the French Operator.
Analysts should revise their estimates downwards based on data from new connections announced by Vodafone or Telefonica this year. I agree with Allen Proithis, Global Tech Executive: IoT, Digital Transformation, Strategic Partnerships, Emerging Technology, he said “the lack of emphasis on IoT reflects the struggle of mobile operators to monetize IoT outside of connections, especially at the SaaS or data level”
Winner MWC2019 – Deutsche Telekom – IoT Solution Optimiser
IoT and Network Infrastructure Vendors
This section is reserved for a few players – Ericsson, Huawei, and Nokia share most of the pie around the network infrastructure. A suspicion of Huawei security and doubts on the Operator’s role in election outcomes can delay 5G deployments in Europe. The Americans and the Chinese have already placed their decisions.
Only Huawei granted me an opportunity to meet their VP, a friend of mine.
I tried several times to reach Nokia whereas I did not even try to reach Ericsson this year, I already heard its strategy three times in the last year.
By far, Nokia has gained in terms of its connectivity offer with Nokia Wing, the ecosystem and the use cases (somewhat more advanced than those presented last year).
Winner MWC2019 – Nokia – Nokia Wing
IoT and IT Technology Vendors
The technology behemoth Microsoft revealed its second-generation HoloLens AR and all I can say is that it left a ridiculous gap for IoT. Other IT giants such as Dell-EMC-VMware, SAP, Cisco, Oracle, SAS or SAG-Cumulocity did not showcase anything new.
Moving towards the System Integrators, they are not even expected at this fair in relation to IoT. Neither the Cloud, nor the Edge IIoT, nor the IoT Platforms, nor the IoT applications had any new ideas that could have attracted the interest of veterans and novices. Where are the millions of dollars going in the industry, which they say are being spent on IoT?
Winner MWC2019 – No Conclusión
IoT and Countries
Finding an IoT gem among the many tiny cubicles of various countries was similar to finding a needle in a haystack. To me, there was hardly any interest to go through the dozens of small companies that used this event as a stage to make themselves visible to the world. The umbrella allows them to be here but attracting visitors between so much noise and variety to their booth was a big and miraculous task.
Every year, I get in touch with IoT companies and know companies from Israel, UK, Sweden, Canada or France. However, this year to my surprise, I found an interesting company in the pavilion of Belgium. They have developed another league of IoT platform and I liked what they have achieved with Orange. They are my winner of this year.
My special regards to the Colombia pavilion and my friend Edgar Salas.
Winner MWC2019 – AllThingsTalk
IoT and Start-ups
I could not visit 4YFN, but I went to IoT Stars. My friend Marc Pous and his colleagues always do a great job, who comes as a jury every year. It was a good time spent with them over a beer while sharing impressions of the IoT and discussing new ideas to accelerate this market once and for all.
In my opinion, there was no great achievement this year and I still notice a gap in the Industrial IoT start-up space. Most ideas are like “Déjà vu” applications for Consumer IoT which reminds me of the post-years after the Internet boom. Much remains to be done here and it will take time for Universities to train innovators and entrepreneurs of IoT.
Winner MWC2019 – No Conclusión
P.S. The IoT Stars jury awarded two prizes
Key Takeaway:
It does not matter; this Congress was as soporific as the Oscars ceremony but for some strange reasons I keep coming back every year. Although after the fiasco of 2019, my expectations were set to find progress and opportunities in IoT but considering the after-effects, I think next year I will reduce my stay to only two days.
It has become clear that the MWC no longer holds anything interesting with respect to IoT to attract visitors, exhibitors, companies. Instead, IoT enthusiasts should probably look to other – more focussed – industry events.
If you want me to cover anything specific on IoT from MWC,19 then let me know in your comments.