Exhibition Mobile World Congress. Why go to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and how to do it right MWC Exhibition in Barcelona

The annual exhibition of mobile technologies has passed, leaving behind a noticeable aftertaste. Once again, the largest market players gathered under one roof to present their key products. Traditionally, a large number of new products were presented, but there were only a few worthwhile and truly interesting announcements. We will talk about just these in this final article.

The former Canadian smartphone manufacturer (now a security software developer) BlackBerry was one of the first to hold a presentation - it happened on February 25, even before the start of MWC 2017 (later they also took part there). TCL Company, the licensor of the BB brand, introduced a premium mid-class Android smartphone with a recognizable design and a physical keyboard - KEYone.

Despite the weak user interest in the old form factor, the BlackBerry KEYone impressed everyone. BlackBerry, as always, has outdone itself: the new product is confidently on the same level of uniqueness as the Priv slider. Metal body, protective glass with 2.5D coating, USB Type-C, a powerful camera from Google Pixel, as well as a proprietary physical QWERTY keyboard with a fingerprint scanner in the spacebar button and a touch layer are the main characteristic qualities of KEYone. Without a doubt new flagship stands out among everything that is currently on the market.

Technical BlackBerry characteristics KEYone is far from being a true flagship - here the Chinese have clearly saved money. But this does not make the new blackberry keyboard worse.

The KEYone's screen diagonal and resolution are non-standard: 4.5 inches with a 3:2 format and Full HD resolution (1620x1080 pixels). The heart of the device is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor with eight computing cores and 64-bit architecture. It is quite enough for all basic tasks, even for simple games without heavy graphics. After all, KEYone's main audience is wealthy businessmen who require confidentiality. The amount of RAM is sufficient for multitasking - 3 GB. Also here good capacity battery for form factor and hardware - 3,500 mAh. It also supports fast charging Quick Charge 3.0.

The camera module in KEYone is also quite strong. There is a 12-megapixel Sony IMX378 sensor installed here, like the Google Pixel flagships. operating system smartphone - latest version Android 7.1 Nougat without software interfaces, but with applications and an additional layer of security from BlackBerry.

The unveiled BlackBerry KEYone breaks the mold again. He is admired, but also feared. The main deterrent in this case is, of course, the price. It is at the level of $600 or approximately 35 thousand rubles. Moreover, it will be impossible to officially buy a BlackBerry KEYone in Russia, and not everyone will be able to order via the Internet or buy the gray model. However, none of this takes away from the fact that the KEYone is truly an amazing device.

Traditionally, the famous Mobile World Congress exhibition is held in Barcelona in the last month of winter. This event is one of the most significant in the world of mobile technologies and services. The exhibition will last four days - from February 22 to 25.

The popularity of Mobile World Congress lies, first of all, in its scale. Representatives of a large number of countries are participating in the exhibition. Thus, last year the number of participants included 93,000 professionals from the field of mobile technologies. This became a record for all the years of the exhibition's existence. Among the annual participants are mobile content producers, operators mobile communications, representatives of the IT sector. Due to the high prestige of Mobile World Congress, it is mandatory for directors and top managers of specialized companies to attend it. Among the star participants, it is worth noting Bill Ford, Eric Schmitt, Hans Vestberg, who visited the exhibition in different years.

This year, 2,000 companies are scheduled to participate in Mobile World Congress. They present to the public a huge number of gadgets and mobile devices, without which it is impossible to imagine modern man.

In addition to the exhibition itself, the Mobile World Congress program includes conferences, seminars, summits, and partner events. Of particular interest is the Mobile Explorers Club, the so-called Junior Club. It is an interactive platform where young talents aged 8 to 15 years have the opportunity to take part in specialized workshops and workshops.

As usual, Mobile World Congress takes place at the Fira Gran Via conference center, whose huge halls provide comfortable accommodation for all exhibitors. The exhibition will be open to visitors from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Only on the last day this time will be reduced to 16:00.

Anyone can attend the exhibition, however this opportunity includes the purchase of an entrance ticket. For convenience, the organizers have identified several categories of tickets. The most expensive ones, “platinum”, cost 4999 euros. Having such a ticket gives you the opportunity to attend any Mobile World Congress event without any restrictions. For 2699 you can purchase a “golden” ticket.” It does not allow access only to the Platinum Expirience, where top managers of the world's leading companies meet. There is also a “silver” ticket and a “standard” ticket, which cost 2199 and 749 euros respectively. The latter differs only in that it does not provide access to the Global Mobile Awards ceremony.

An ordinary tourist is unlikely to be interested in this, but it is worth keeping in mind that on these dates in Barcelona there is a very big problem with hotel places, since the city needs to accommodate about 100,000 people.

Mobile World Congress is one of the most significant technology events of the year. Large and small companies strive to present their new products there. At MWC 2018 in Barcelona various companies showed a lot of interesting things. At this event, a new samsung smartphone Galaxy S9. But among the new devices at the exhibition there were not the most interesting smartphones LG (G7), HTC (U12) and Huawei (P11).

Productive smartphones, many functions and applications. The mobile industry is constantly pleased with all this. But there are also many users who are quite satisfied with the usual push-button telephone, the modest functionality of which, of course, I would like to supplement with the ability to install some necessary applications. It was announced at the mobile technology exhibition in Barcelona a new version an OS already known to many users, thanks to which such an opportunity appears.

The Brazilian company Sikur, which focuses on the production of secure smartphones, has brought its first device for active cryptocurrency users. The new product, although not distinguished by its outstanding design or unique characteristics, necessarily encrypts all information - from telephone conversations up to your web browser history - and includes a built-in crypto wallet.

Besides Galaxy flagships S9 from Samsung The exhibition also pleases with other devices. Some of them are significantly different from most smart phones of our time. A striking example of such a smartphone was the Power Max P16K Pro, the main quality of which is not hardware, not software, and especially not design. It realized the dream of many users about a battery that does not need constant charging. What are your very first impressions of this amazing phone?

What do users expect from new products at the 2018 exhibition? Stylish design, productive hardware and new interesting software features. All this, of course, is wonderful, but some users would prefer the opportunity to charge their mobile device less often. Especially if the smartphone looks quite modern and pleases with its other characteristics. It is precisely this device that will see the light, among others, at the upcoming exhibition.

At the mobile technology exhibition, users will see not only modern smartphones, but also those things that make these devices so beloved by a wide audience - new technologies. As previously expected, it was during this significant exhibition for the industry that the long-awaited release of a new augmented reality platform from the search giant took place - ARCore, which connoisseurs of high technology already knew a little about before. What does this mean for upcoming Android smartphones and users of these popular devices?

The first smartphones under control will be presented during the Mobile Congress in Barcelona. Google Senior Vice President Hiroshi Lockheimer spoke about this. According to him, several devices based on a lightweight version of the OS will be shown at the event to provide consumers with more choice.

Mobile Word Congress is the world's largest mobile industry exhibition. They take part in it mobile operators, manufacturers of mobile devices and producers of various content for mobile platforms. The exhibition is held annually and acts as a kind of testing ground for the presentation of certain developments various manufacturers. Many people strive to show mock-ups of devices at the exhibition that are not even really ready yet, in order to stir up public interest in the upcoming release of the device itself.

2019 will be the launch year cellular networks fifth generation. 5G will be one of the major technology themes of the coming year and tech industry leaders are already preparing for an era of new speeds mobile Internet. According to a new report, two South Korean technology companies - Samsung and LG - will delight the public with 5G smartphones at MWC 2019, which begins at the end of February next year. A very noticeable difference is expected between the innovative products of the two famous mobile device vendors.

Recently, the fact that Valve is about to introduce its virtual reality headset, rumors about which have been in the air for several months. Well, that day has come, only the Valve headset was presented at MWC 2015 not by Gabe Newell’s company, but by the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer HTC. The headset was called Vive and was developed by Taiwanese engineers together with specialists from Valve. It seems that he has acquired a serious competitor.

Hello! My name is Katya Frank, I am a leading marketer at Mobile Dimension. In this article I will give a short analysis of the Mobile World Congress exhibition in Barcelona, ​​compare it a little with the same exhibition from GSMA in Shanghai, tell you who should participate in it, and how to organize everything so as not to screw it up. I’ll also tell you what could have been prepared better, what we missed, and what I recommend doing to everyone who goes there next year. The article will be useful to marketers and business developers of IT companies.

I will not show new products from Samsung and Nokia (but I will show a helicopter) and review the stands or give a tour; there is a lot of information about this part of the exhibition in the RuNet, so I would like to shed some light on the side that is not visible to the media. I’ll also tell you a little about how to take part in MWC and not go broke, but this is not advertising, but part of the life experience that we lived.

Background

Mobile Dimension is a mobile application developer working in foreign markets, and, in general, we found it logical for us to participate in MWC Shanghai last year, and in MWC Barcelona this year.

Last year we went to Shanghai as participants in the Russian pavilion organized by the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation. We went to Barcelona with the Russian Export Center and this time we had our own stand within the pavilion.

Next, I will tell you in more detail about preparations for the trip, about REC co-financing and what it is, how to go through the procedure and what you will get in the end

For those who are immediately interested in the exhibition, I recommend scrolling further, since there is about a page of organizational details ahead that will be useful only to marketers.

To begin with, I will say that, as many people know, participation in such major exhibitions as MWC, Computex Taipei and others, just from the street, in my humble opinion, costs like a Boeing wing. For many, these are unaffordable marketing budgets for a brand-building project. Such exhibitions cost from 7 thousand euros for Raw Space 6 meters without development (we add about the same amount for the simplest development) and up to plus infinity, depending on how little time is left before the event and what your appetites are. Building a city on the floor of a pavilion in the Gazprom style is priceless. You can spend three days at an exhibition once, have a blast and immediately close the company and go to the Cayman Islands to hide from the collectors who will come after you. The situation is a little better if you have already participated. You can claim that you are a second-year participant, demand a discount, try to negotiate. It’s a little easier to bargain in China, since all the materials for construction are produced there and everything is basically cheaper there.

I'll tell you how you can do this significantly cheaper.

The Russian Export Center is an organization that provides all possible support for Russian exports (including non-raw materials) abroad. The support program also includes co-financing (partial financing), i.e. indirect material support for SMEs. I translate into Russian - if you are a small and medium-sized business, you can receive co-financing for your participation in a major international event, both as part of the Russian delegation and separately. Indirect support means that no one pays you money directly, but takes on a fairly large percentage of your costs. The total amount is different each time depending on the specific event, but I can say from myself that this saves you a very significant marketing budget + gives you a lot of interesting opportunities, such as an extra badge or other benefits from being at the national stand.

For reference: At such large exhibitions as CES, CEBIT or MWC there are almost always national pavilions. Young companies united in a national pavilion present themselves there.

What is the advantage of participating in the national pavilion?

And it's very simple. If you are an abstract startup HighTech Mobile Innovation Inc, then the maximum you can count on at MWC is a stand of 6 square meters for a lot of money with a simple design. Moreover, what is most offensive is that such giants as Nokia, Samsung, ZTE, Huawei and others buy up space years before the exhibition and have priority over everyone else in choosing a profitable location. As a result, small stands are often shoved into the far corner so as not to spoil the plan and engineering of the development. This year, seats were even sold in the corridors between the pavilions. It's expensive and makes little sense. There is a huge amount of traffic in the corridors, and on the one hand this is good, but on the other hand, in order to take advantage of it, you need to make a huge amount of effort to attract their attention.

In general, as they say, it depends on the taste and color... But from simple logic, participation at the stand of the national delegation with an area of ​​100 square meters is more profitable than at a stand with an area of ​​6 square meters in the corridor. A large stand is more noticeable, higher, and attracts more attention.

A very sad stand of a very interesting startup in an escalator bay.

What else does participation at the national stand give?

Of course, you will be published in the pavilion catalogue, and will also be provided with all sorts of business programs and business events, meetings with business missions from other pavilions and other cultural events. Otherwise, the main point here is participation.

What is required and what awaits you?

First of all, mentally prepare for collecting, filling out and sending a large number of documents, incl. in the originals. Anyone who has ever prepared a tender is familiar with this; the list of documents is approximately the same. You will definitely need an extract from the SME and from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. If you have a special person on your team who can be entrusted with this, consider yourself lucky. And remember that even if no one warns you about this at first, in the end they will definitely ask you for the originals by mail, be prepared for this and store each piece of paper like the first spring flower. To begin with, you can submit an application for registration in the system (i.e., become an exporter) and, having gone through this stage, assess whether you are ready to continue collecting paperwork. I will be ready to share links in the comments if anyone needs advice on the process. Be prepared for the entire procedure to take a lot of time. Submit documents in advance and monitor the publication of protocols on the website - whether you have been approved to participate in co-financing for the event or not. Feel free to call there to check the status.

Now a little more introductory information about the exhibition itself

When we arrived in Barcelona, ​​we were shocked by the level of organization. Badges were issued on all days in all airport terminals, you could get them in the city, at two, it seems, issuing points, as well as in the exhibition complex itself (the latter is highly not recommended by the organizers themselves - there are a lot of people). When you apply for a badge on the website, you can check the box indicating where exactly you want to receive your badge and on what date.

At the airport, an entire floor was dedicated to issuing badges, the navigation “For MWC participants - go there” is extremely clear, every 15 meters there is a volunteer in a uniform red vest who will show you the way and give you advice.

What caused us total delight was the metro ticket. All participants are given a metro pass along with their badge, which is valid for all four days of the exhibition throughout the city. Firstly, the metro in Barça is very expensive, and secondly, the Fira Barcelona exhibition complex is located on a separate commercial metro line, the fare for which must be paid separately from the main system, so I can very well imagine what kind of hellish crowd would stand at the payment terminals, if the organizers had not issued tickets in advance.

In the city itself it’s the same – banners are everywhere, navigation is everywhere, advertising is everywhere, WMC info-points are everywhere.

Remark. When planning your visit to MWC, take care of your accommodations well in advance. We bought everything in December, but even then the hotel cost about half a million rubles for four, so we rented an inexpensive apartment on Airbnb. But in this case, check whether the apartment has heating; it snowed in Barcelona during our trip.

About the exhibition

When we went to Shanghai last year, we realized how different the Asian world is from the European one, even at such global events. If at MWC in Shanghai almost all the manufacturers were Chinese, they sold and offered services and products for the domestic market and did not even try very hard to translate their materials, headlines and stands into English, but in Barcelona everything is exactly the opposite. In Fira Barcelona, ​​and these are 9 (nine!) huge halls + corridors and courtyards of a huge walking carnival, focused on Europe here and now.

In this regard, what you definitely need to do for MWC in Barcelona- is to prepare good, attractive and understandable materials for English language, or better yet, bother and translate them into Spanish. We translated only into English, but did not translate into Spanish and to some extent regretted it.

Pavilion 8.1 was entirely dedicated to mobile applications and development, promotion and mobile advertising. We ended up in hall 6, where there was no one else, but since it was the REC pavilion, we could not influence the choice of hall. The problem is that the exhibition does not officially divide the exhibitors into halls; the exhibition divides them only according to the engineering of the stands, laying them out on the plan like in Tetris. Therefore, if it is convenient for the exhibition to move you in order to squeeze in a stand the size of a football field, the exhibition will do it. The result is 9 halls of an endless flow of information that cannot be structured in any way. To get around all nine and not go crazy, you have to use the method of exiting the labyrinth - walk all the time along right side.

If you are a mobile developer and planning to participate next year– write to the organizers and ask where they plan to place the developer hall. Why was this important? Because many who come to MWC come immediately with specific tasks, to specific companies and with pre-arranged meetings and do not go around random halls to click their beaks. As a result, it turns out that if you are a developer, but you are not in the hall you need (in our case, not in 8.1), your audience may simply not know about your stand. Our stand was located in pavilion 6 and it turned out that this was not entirely successful. There was no such problem in Shanghai, since there were almost no mobile developers there, and the exhibition itself was smaller.

Who knows, maybe the organizers will start dividing the halls into Apps, Health & Wearable, IoT and other categories to make it easier for visitors to navigate. But so far such a clear boundary was only in hall 8.1. - mobile applications.

Nokia stand at MWC18

First of all, when planning your stand, think about the feature. There are so many stands and such sizes that it is really very difficult to outdo your neighbor. Nokia this year, without undue modesty, simply built a city for half the pavilion. Think about the details, ask the developer what the height of the walls at the stand adjacent to you is, try not to be lower. Forget about hot air balloons - they're a thing of the past. The buzz of the season is rotating structures suspended on rails from the ceiling, moving elements with lighting, everything as high as possible, as bright as possible, as loud as possible.

Think over a system of competitions at the stand, don’t burden anyone with a business program, hire promotional girls, place a mustang at the stand and pour beer, give a smart watch and invest in the promotion of your stand. AppsFlyer poured whiskey at a stand decorated like a wild west saloon and played music, something that will be remembered for a very long time. Create hype and intrigue around your stand, stir up interest, promise everyone a surprise and a private party. We didn’t have such a feature, since we were extremely limited by the concept of the national pavilion. We are very sorry, next year we will come up with something to surprise you with.

In general, networking is a huge part of the point of being there. Make appointments through the exhibition portal and through the mobile application, do not ignore this opportunity, it is really very convenient. We were constantly meeting people, going to 4YFN events and having a ton of meetings at the booth. Now we understand that we could do even more.

Organize business meetings with target customers. At MWC there are people who privately organize (for money, of course) visits to your stand of various companies that interest you; you can and should negotiate with such people, these are targeted contacts. Most likely, they will write to you themselves as soon as your company is published on the MWC website. Unfortunately, we did not take advantage of this opportunity; we thought that there was already enough networking and would limit ourselves to business meetings organized by the stand. We regret it a little.

Negotiate with the giants six months in advance. Many large companies generally have stands at MWC that are completely closed from the public passing by, with only meeting rooms. It is impossible to get to such stands without prior registration; registration is closed completely sometimes two months in advance. Among such companies were Ernst&Young, Google (Android), Boston consulting, Nokia. We didn’t know about this and couldn’t get to the Android stand.

Meet the crowd of competitors and startups. MWC constantly organizes self-organized evening events and parties, and this is a great chance to meet people and exchange experiences. We went to such events every evening and learned a lot of new and useful contacts, literally, from meeting people in line at the bar!

Try co-branding! Negotiate with partner companies, with large corporations with friendly marketing, split the costs of your stand in half and receive benefits from the advantageous neighborhood. In the same way, you can simply use the proximity to a conditional Google stand, but without prior agreements this will be technically difficult to do.

What else was interesting at the exhibition?

Helicopter from Huawei.

Global Mobile Awards
If you're attending MWC, you can submit your solution to the Global Mobile Awards. Be careful, applications close at the beginning of January, you need to fill out a rather impressive form, then the jury selection begins. There are many categories, it’s quite easy to choose for yourself. At first glance, it seems that it is impossible to compete with giants like Huawei and Zte, but we managed to enter the top five nominees in our category with mobile application“Pregnancy Calendar”, and this is an Oscar nomination mobile world! The awards ceremony looks very cool and is really very similar to the Oscars - red carpets and brilliant TV presenters. And, of course, when your logo is shown from the GLOMO stage, it’s a very exciting moment.

There were really a lot of stands. It is pointless to list them all, and this is not a review of the exhibition, but a practical guide to participation.

So, we get to the conclusions.

It makes sense to participate if you:

• Mobile developer or selling a service for developers
• Produce anything wearable - gadgets, medical devices, fitness trackers, headphones
• Produce software with versions for mobile devices
• Implemented mobile technology in your company and want to tell the whole world about it - the Mercedes Benz stand presented the Smart concept car and the new A-classe, stuffed with electronics and mobility
• In general, anything related to mobility, even if you produce batteries

It definitely does NOT make sense to participate in only one case: if you produce something that is not translated (localized) in at least English. It is advisable to go to the exhibition only with a fully translated and finished product.

Is it worth participating without a stand, walking around and handing out leaflets, making acquaintances?
Yes, but that's not certain. The entry ticket for the simplest level costs one thousand euros + travel expenses. He only gives passes to the exhibition. To get to additional lectures, you need to get a silver pass, which is immediately much more expensive. If there is no way to set up a stand, then it is certainly better to go just as a visitor than not at all. But at the same time, you need to understand that there will be a million people like you, mixed with a million promotional personnel with leaflets.

It will be difficult, but fun.