The diversity of companies present in the Mobile is increasing. The mobile phones that gave the congress its name are still there and resist as the main focus of attention, but the truth is that the catalog that can be visited among the more than 2,000 exhibitors that are part of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) is much broader. Transport, logistics, health, industry… Any sector can have a relationship with technology and, therefore, with the MWC, which is held from February 27 to March 2 at Fira de Barcelona’s Gran Via venue.
The change has been taking place gradually for years and after the pandemic it has hatched. There are already more than half the attendees who belong to parallel lines to mobile telephony. For this reason, the CEO of the GSMA, John Hoffman, insists on calling the event MWC instead of Mobile, a name that should be remembered as the evolution of 3GSM, which is what the event was called when it landed in Barcelona almost twenty years.
The evolution towards a much broader spectrum also translates to a greater variety of attendees, exhibitors and speakers. The list of main conferences serves as an example, where the CEOs of the large global operators such as Telefónica share a poster with the Maersk shipping company, to give an example. Synergies between companies that apparently have nothing in common are much more common than it might seem at MWC.
All this has led to reinforcing the role of Barcelona as a meeting point for the sector on a global scale. Americans and Asians meet here to approach positions and do business around the large number of issues for which the industries of both continents need each other. Tired of videoconferences, this year it is expected to receive Chinese congressmen again after the lifting of the severe restrictions that prevented them from leaving their country. Most have not set foot in the Catalan capital since 2019 and they want to meet up with their colleagues from the rest of the world. Huawei, one of the giants in the sector, will once again occupy almost an entire pavilion exclusively to carry out its meetings and professional gatherings, as on great occasions.
It is not an isolated case. The 240,000 m2 of the eight pavilions available at the Gran Via fairgrounds in l’Hospitalet are once again full, further consolidating the incorporation of the 4YFN as one more element of the show. In this way, it is a great opportunity for the powerful local ecosystem, which can rub shoulders with senior managers with decision-making power of large multinationals. Although Hoffman and his team pamper quality over quantity, the expansion works at the l’Hospitalet fairgrounds are an opportunity to continue growing in the future.
The accelerated recovery of the MWC leads to thinking big and makes us forget the unfortunate years of the pandemic. It was precisely the suspension of the 2020 edition that advanced everything that was to come from March of that year, and it was also the 2022 celebration that reopened hotels that had been collecting dust for months and marked the beginning of recovery. More than 80,000 congressmen are expected this year, still below pre-covid levels, but 30% more than last year. The forecasts are very optimistic both on the part of the organizers and the economic sectors of the city that are benefited by the celebration of the congress. The economic impact for this edition exceeds 350 million euros in the Barcelona metropolitan area.
The city and the administrations involved have been breathing easy since last summer, when the GSMA sealed a practically lifetime commitment to Barcelona. The permanence contract has been renewed until 2030, and from then on the continuity is confirmed unless one of the two parties says otherwise, a currently unimaginable scenario. “It is a huge window of opportunity, it allows us to approach long-term projects from another perspective”, celebrates Francesc Fajula, general director of Mobile World Capital Barcelona.
In the same line that the congress has evolved, the foundation that was born a decade ago is doing so to leave a legacy of the congress in the city and promote the local ecosystem. “Technology is as important as people and the sustainability of the planet”, sums up Fajula. This is demonstrated, with a high degree of maturity, by the exhibition spaces of the MWCapital within the fair, both in the MWC and in the 4YFN, as well as in the innovative Beat Barcelona afterwork point. The services and specific uses exhibited in these places have been thought to squeeze the five senses of the visitors, thus imposing themselves on the pure and simple technological infrastructure of yesteryear. Virtual reality glasses are still there and play a fundamental role, but they do so with a clearly determined purpose in each case.
