Moving Ahead in the Mobile World

More than 60,000 visitors from 200 countries attended the 2011 GSMA Mobile World Congress, marking a record for the mobile industry's premier event. The 4-day conference and exhibition attracted executives from the world's largest and most influential mobile operators, software companies, equipment providers, internet companies and media and entertainment organizations, as well as government delegations. Fifty-one percent of this year's Mobile World Congress attendees hold C-level positions, including the more than 3,000 CEOs.

“The record attendance in this year's Mobile World Congress is indicative of the impact and importance of mobile in not only technology and telecommunications, but across nearly all facets of the private and public sectors,” stated John Hoffman, CEO, GSMA “Mobile truly is leading a transformation in how the world communicates, how business is conducted and how people live their lives. We are very proud of the contribution that the GSMA and the Mobile World Congress have in furthering this transformation.”

The 2011 Congress hosted nearly 1,400 exhibiting companies and occupied more than 58,600 net square metres of exhibition and business meeting space. More than 2,900 international print, web and broadcast media attended the event to analyze and report on the many significant industry announcements made at the Congress.

During the event, CEOs from companies including Airtel, América Móvil, AT&T, China Mobile, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Google, HTC, Intel, Microsoft, Nokia, NTT DOCOMO, Qualcomm, Research In Motion (RIM), SoftBank, Telefónica, Twitter, Vodafone, Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), WPP and Yahoo!, discussed and debated the trends and issues which are shaping the mobile industry today and into the future. In addition to the keynote program, the conference covered a range of topics such as applications, mobile advertising, mobile money, mobile health, embedded mobile, cloud computing, network capacity and next-generation network technologies, among many others.

Developers have a Great Time

There were more than 45,000 visits to App Planet, a focused event designed to bring together the many critical elements of the broad mobile application ecosystem together in one location. Companies including developerprogram.com, HP, IMGA, Microsoft, Mobile {Dev}Sync, Nokia, RIM, Samsung, WAC and Wireless Industry Partnership, all held application developer conferences (ADCs), and App Planet also hosted Macworld Mobile, a developer event targeting Apple iOS developers. App Planet included the Mobile Cloud Forum, sponsored by Cisco, HP, Huawei and NEC, and the LTE Forum, sponsored by Huawei, NEC, Syniverse and ZTE. Overall, more than 12,000 developers attended Mobile World Congress this year.

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Government Participation

The GSMA's Ministerial Program also boasted record attendance, with government delegations from 131 countries meeting in Barcelona, an increase of 50% over 2010. Sponsored this year by Saudi Telecom, Huawei and Qualcomm, the GSMA's Ministerial Program is a unique invitation-only event gathering ministers, regulators and CEOs from across the mobile industry for a series of in-depth strategic, policy and regulatory discussions in high-level summits and bilateral meetings. Dates for the 2012 Mobile World Congress are February 27 to March 1, 2012.

Courtesy: GSMA

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