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In this feature video, Mobile World Live interviews key executives who share their vision of the Mobile World Capital and provide greater detail on the programmes and activities that Barcelona will be undertaking. The video also provides a snapshot of the official press conference held at the Fira de Barcelona Montjuic. Read more...
The CEO of the world’s largest mobile network vendor used his keynote presentation at this year’s GSMA Mobile World Congress to outline the three key elements required to create the ‘networked society.’ “Those three forces – mobility, broadband and the cloud – are what is transforming the industry, consumer behaviour and even our society,” said Hans Vestberg. “We are going to see totally different business models in the next 20 years and it’s not a given that the winners of the last 20 years wil Read more...
RIM co-chief executive Jim Balsillie used his keynote presentation at this year’s GSMA Mobile World Congress to outline how he believes mobile operators and consumer electronics manufacturers can work together. “It’s about constructive alignment between carrier and consumer electronics companies to create transformative experiences for consumers where you have sustained prosperity for the carrier as a services platform,” he stated. Key to this, Balsillie claimed, are his company Read more...
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz outlined at Mobile World Congress earlier this year how the Internet giant is planning to deliver content to its 630 million monthly users via mobile devices. Yahoo’s new mantra is “content and context,” a goal to deliver highly personalised content to users. “Everything that is served up to you must be relevant; noisy content is yesterday’s Internet,” she said. “Content and context is the sweet spot for Yahoo.” Read more...
Peters Suh, chief executive of the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), told delegates during his Mobile World Congress keynote earlier this year that the alliance is eyeing growth beyond the mobile device market. “Right now we’re seeing the tip of the iceberg… it’s beyond mobile.,” he said, adding that users will decide whether to use apps “on a mobile device, on a tablet, on a PC or on a 50-inch display… That’s what we need to address.” Read more...
During his keynote appearance at Mobile World Congress this year, Ryuji Yamada, President & CEO of NTT Docomo, put the embedded mobile space at the heart of his company’s future strategy. He claimed the Japanese machine-to-machine market will enjoy double-digit growth, enabling the operator to generate future revenue of JPY100 billion (US$1.2 billion). He added that Docomo’s wireless modules are already used by 1,000 companies across Japan. Read more...
Mobile Internet is driving fundamental changes in the mobile industry, business, individual lifestyles and society at large. “I would not have thought that technology would change politics or democracy. But it changed the American electoral cycle, it just changed two countries and it’s not going to stop there. It’s a liberating technology,” said Paul Otellini. “So who’s going to win? Mankind is going to win.” Read more...
America Movil CEO Daniel Hajj Aboumrad used his keynote presentation at this year’s GSMA Mobile World Congress to outline the factors behind the rapid evolution of the Latin American mobile market over the last decade. A market of over 600 million people, the region now has more mobile connections than both the US and Western Europe and is approaching 100 percent mobile penetration. “The huge gap that separated Latin America from the US and Europe has been breached,” he declared. Read more...
César Alierta used his keynote address at this year’s GSMA Mobile World Congress to call for greater engagement between telecoms players and content providers to ensure consumers receive a quality experience. He took a direct approach with regard to the investment needed to make this happen, and called for content providers to start contributing towards the high levels of required capex. Read more...
Martin Sorrell, CEO of advertising giant WPP, used his keynote presentation at this year’s GSMA Mobile World Congress to declare that “in terms of revenue generated through apps, we are still only touching the tip of the iceberg. The opportunity for growth is huge as smartphones get into the hands of masses.” He noted that the ability of mobile apps to provide advertisers and publishers with a method to deliver targeted content, using personal data and location information to improve accuracy, “ Read more...
During his keynote at the GSMA Mobile World Congress, SoftBank chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son warned of a “depressing reality” for operators forced to cope with unprecedented levels of mobile data traffic and “zero growth” profitability. He forecast that data traffic will increase a 1,000 times from today’s levels in ten years, a situation he said would “only make [Cisco CEO] John Chambers happy.” Read more...
Qualcomm chief executive Dr Paul E. Jacobs used his keynote presentation at the GSMA Mobile World Congress to state his belief that the mobile industry is on the verge of undergoing another step in its evolution with it being positioned as the hub for connecting with many other devices. “Our phones will become our ‘sixth sense’, and we’re at a similar stage of evolution to when the mobile Internet started to happen,” he said. Jacobs claimed there will be hundreds or thousands of things around us Read more...
Cisco’s John Chambers used his keynote address at this year’s Mobile World Congress to stress his belief that video provides the key to encouraging consumers and enterprises to pay more by fundamentally changing the way they communicate. “If you can drive productivity by one to two percent a year, you don’t need to ask how you charge for that as a service provider,” he said. “It won’t be 60 percent of loads on networks five years out that will be visual. It will be 80-90 percent. Everythin Read more...
Consumers want to view or access the same content across a number of devices, and not be restricted by the particular characteristics of an OS, device or network, stated AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson in his keynote at February’s Mobile World Congress. “The customer experience will be OS and device agnostic, even network agnostic,” said Stephenson. “Consumers are not concerned or preoccupied about which access medium they use - mobile, fixed or Wi-Fi. As LTE networks become available, the cloud Read more...
Peter Chou, CEO of the fast-rising smartphone vendor, used his keynote address at Mobile World Congress to state that the company’s focus in the mobile app ecosystem is in integrating the best products and services with its other hardware and software solutions, in order to deliver a more rounded solution for customers. Read more...
Stephen Elop, CEO of Nokia, switched focus away from the company’s smartphone activities (and high-profile alliance with Microsoft) at last month’s Mobile World Congress to discuss opportunities in extending connectivity to the unconnected. Read more...
Mobile World Live takes a high-octane look at the sights and sounds that made this year’s Mobile World Congress the busiest – and best – ever. Read more...
During his keynote speech at Mobile World Congress, Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao stressed the importance of openness. "We're giving billing to everybody," he said, demonstrating that operators are finally starting to open up their previously guarded systems. In an apparent reference to Apple, he also said it is important for the industry to move away from vertically-integrated closed dominant systems. Read more...
Chairman Wang Jianzhou used his keynote presentation at Mobile World Congress to detail his company’s WiFi plans (one million hotspots nationwide in three years) as the world’s largest operator looks to avoid a capacity crunch. “We urge all handset manufacturers to provide [an] embedded WiFi connection and make it a default function,” Wang said. Read more...