15 years ago, the 3GSM World Congress (as it was still called then) was the most important event in the most emerging phase of an incredibly exciting industry. Towards the end of the era of push-button phones, oddities growing from PDAs to smartphones, and during the most successful years of the Nokia-Symbian hegemony, such an exhibition held as many different, different approaches, exciting and disruptive models not only for the media, but also for end users, as the baking tray after the spread of smartphones, we can’t even imagine today.
When for years only slightly better, slightly stronger, slightly larger, slightly more capable devices were out at MWC, then in 2019 it finally looked like a minor revolution could take place with the presentation of phones with bendable displays, but now, when four years later, we go to the exhibition, you can still only get one Fold4 in Europe, but even in the folding line, Samsung has only recently had opponents. The smartwatch revolution has been missed just as much as the battery breakthrough that has been desired for years, while Gen Z (the youngest age group) in the USA almost only buys iPhones, so we are going to take a look at a market where one of the most industry-shaping Apple was never present. It won’t be this year either.
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Samsung pulled out of the MWC announcement dump a long time ago, they set up a stand just to show respect, Huawei dropped out of the competition in Europe, LG voluntarily left the market, Sony and Asus won’t even come, so the Chinese manufacturers remain quasi. Xiaomi, Oppo, TCL, Realme, Honor, Motorola, and HMD (Nokia) as a quasi-only exception. This is quite a marked change compared to the lineup 15 years ago, when we looked at HTC, LG, Alcatel, Nokia, Samsung, as well as Acer, Sharp, Sony Ericsson, HP, Blackberry, Palm and even American-owned Motorola stuff. Apart from Apple and Samsung, the smartphone market is mostly Chinese.
Still, it’s worth going. On the one hand, the A-line of Chinese devices is quite good. There is innovation here and there, they also come with bendable stuff, they have a lot of relevant offers. And the B-line is now starting to gather itself through Ulefone, Cubot, Doogee, or Blackview, not to mention wild drives like Unihertz. The supply chain is also represented on both the hardware and software sides, plus the smart home and car aspects have also increased significantly, there will be something to see, but the diversity of 10-15 years ago is already a thing of the past.
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In any case, a lot of MWC news and videos will be published on the site and on our YouTube channel in the next few days. Bone123, Dani Virág and myself will represent Mobilarena this year, but László Tech2 and Zsolt Tamás will also be with us, we will participate in many programs, we have organized many meetings, we will try to deliver the materials from today. We are also updated on Instagram and Facebook, for us it is still exciting, despite all the past laments, and we try to pass this on to the readers and viewers.
