As the chills of February give way to the renewal of March, the mobile industry kicks off its year with the grand Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. In years past, this has been the launchpad for tons of smartphone innovation — so we keep hoping for more of the same — but in 2017 MWC is rather different.
The real change-makers in the mobile industry now are people like Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who’ll be speaking in Barcelona on Monday, and new US FCC chief Ajit Pai, who’ll be talking up 5G on Tuesday. When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg made a surprise appearance during Samsung’s MWC 2016 keynote, he stole the show, and with good reason. The decisions made by US and European regulators (the European Commission’s Andrus Ansip is another keynote speaker), content providers like Netflix, and internet gatekeepers like Facebook will alter our mobile lives in far bigger ways than the latest anodized aluminum bijou for your pocket.
The world’s premier phone show isn’t really a phone show anymore
Yes, there’ll be new phones here in Barcelona, but what used to be the premier phone show is now more openly an industry event than ever. You just have to think of MWC a little more like CES: richer on long-term future developments and less focused on flashing awesome retail devices in front of our faces.
Galaxy S8
SamMobile
To my mind, there are only four phones that will be truly impactful in 2017 and none of them are going to be launching at MWC: Apple’s iPhone, Samsung’s Galaxy S8, Google’s second Pixel, and the next OnePlus handset.