Highlights from Day 3 of the MWC in Barcelona

Posted by Philippa Hobbs Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

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RIM champions BlackBerry traffic efficiencies
In Asia-Pacific markets, operators are putting pressure on Apple to address some of the signalling issues made increasingly worse by continued growth of smartphone adoption, in order to reduce the iPhone’s impact on the network. We’re hearing from the operators we speak to that the device is proving more inefficient in the way it handles signalling versus other competing devices. Somewhat controversially citing BlackBerry devices as a solution to the capacity crunch, RIM CEO stated that ‘you could carry five BlackBerry devices for each iPhone on the network’. Whether true or not, this bears no relevance to consumer purchasing decisions – whether it convinces operators to push the BlackBerry more aggressively is unclear.

Ericsson booth is the place for superior service
A few of our analysts spent time at Ericsson’s impressive hospitality suite today and were struck by how quickly new CEO Hans Vestverg had made his mark on their Congress presence and messages. You’d be hard pressed to realise that Ericsson is the world’s leading supplier of base stations by installed base; such was the focus on its services business. On another point, Ericsson has long-since talked up its vision of a world of 50 billion connected devices, and as if to prove the point, has decked out its exhibition space with an array of connected devices, of which the interestingly connected tree stood out most.

Less is more
The one thing we’ve really noticed is that the days of uber-hyped mega-glitzy launches seem to be in the past. The razzmatazz around Windows Phone 7 was probably the biggest story and we’re seeing exhibitors have been quietly going about their business without the need for flashy launches. And in our Informa-l Congress awards, we’re delighted to announce the following accolades:

“Best stand freebie” – FlashNetworks’ stress balls – to relieve all that stress caused by spending longer in the lunch queue than it takes to wolf down a sandwich.

“Most welcome visitor of day three” – the sun. That’s more like the MWC weather we know and love.

Finally, successfully defending its position as having the “most universally talked about stand attraction” – CBOSS. Who else?