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What is Mobile World Congress? A brief history
Mobile World Congress is the biggest event on the calendar for phone makers, and the launchpad for new devices, but how did it start and who created it?
The annual Mobile World Congress calls in to Barcelona this week. It’s a chance for everyone who’s anyone in the mobile phone industry to meet, do deals and announce new products.
More than 70,000 people are expected to attend.
Yes, CES in Las Vegas is a bigger technology show, including everything from televisions to games consoles, but in terms of gadgets that fit in your pocket, MWC is where it’s at.
We’re expecting new flagship phones from HTC and Samsung, which will be interesting but not surprising – images of both handsets have already been released, leaving just finer details for the speeches.
We’ll have a new LG smartwatch, the Urbane, and Microsoft is planning a bigger-than-usual presence.
The show is the time when the phones we will all be buying and using over the next year are put on display - the biggest event in the calendar for phone makers, and, increasingly, wearables too.
It’s organised by the GSM Association, which is a collection of mobile operators and manufacturers who banded together in 1982 to promote the GSM standard – which went rather well, as it’s now used by more then 90 per cent of networks, in 219 countries.
The show itself was launched in 1987 as the GSM World Congress, later changing to 3GSM World Congress when we all switched to faster 3G networks.
Realising that periodic name changes would be needed as new technology emerged, it later changed to the all-encompassing Mobile World Congress. Otherwise we’d probably now be attending the 4GSM World Congress.
Until 2006 it took place in Cannes, near the beach, but now it is held in the Fira Gran Via in Barcelona. Near the beach.
For coverage from the show make sure to visit our MWC page from Sunday onwards.