The Chinese congressmen were the ones who raised the Mobile to attendance levels above 100,000 attendees before the covid appeared. His absence during the hard years of the pandemic best exemplified the difficulties in celebrating global events in those times. Now, its massive registration for the next edition is the definitive sign that Barcelona will once again be, during the last week of February, the meeting point that it already was between Americans, Asians and Europeans.
The problems of the Chinese economy do not seem to be a problem. Quite the opposite. “They have to come here precisely in search of opportunities, Mobile is the place to do business,” highlighted Mats Granryd, the general director of the GSMA, during the presentation of the congress. The answers to journalists’ questions and the headlines were usually provided by the most visible face of Mobile, John Hoffman, absent for the first time for personal reasons.
The manufacturer Huawei is once again the exhibitor with the most square meters contracted, practically occupying an entire pavilion of the eight that will fill the Mobile. With 2,400 exhibiting companies, the congress once again hangs up as ‘complete’.
The return of the Asians leads those responsible for the congress to anticipate about 95,000 attendees, a figure that is above the 88,500 last year but still below the almost 110,000 that were reached in 2019. The organizers do not have the aspiration To recover those figures in which it was really uncomfortable to move through crowded hallways, they prefer to win in quality rather than quantity.
They also gain diversity, since around half of attendees do not strictly belong to the mobile telephone sector. Although everyone popularly refers to the congress as Mobile, the organizers made a strategic change to the name and renamed it MWC to accommodate the entire ecosystem around technology. In that sense, there will be numerous mobility and health companies… Artificial intelligence will obviously also have its place.
Apart from the large multinationals that land in Barcelona from China, the United States and the rest of the world, one of the places that has the most movement is 4 Years From Now. This show for emerging companies and entrepreneurs is celebrating its tenth anniversary, which began as a complementary event in Montjuïc and has ended up integrated into the heart of Mobile with all the honors.