MWC 2011 Live: The Unseen Side of the Mobile World Congress

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The Mobile World Congress came and went in a heart beat. After five days of hot mobile action, and yes, we’re counting the pre-MWC press events too since we were right there for the whole duration of the show, and after over 60 hands-on previews with brand new and recently launched devices, both tablets and smartphones, mostly Android-powered gadgets, we’re ready to go home.

2011 will be an impressive year for the mobile business, as we’re going to see some impressive handsets and tablets hit stores but also witness the continuous power struggle between Apple, Google and the new Microsoft-Nokia newly created Death Star.

In short MWC 2011 was dominated by Android devices and there’s no question about it. We did look at Windows Phone 7 handsets, Windows 7 tablets, bada phones and even MeeGo-powered devices but the undisputed king of the show was Android.

On the other hand, without actually being there, the iPhone 4 won the best mobile device at the GSMA Awards, which is not something we didn’t expect, in fact we deemed it the best smartphone of 2010 ourselves.

Furthermore the iPad was the most used tablet on the floor. From exhibitors, to business professional coming to MWC to look for new partnership and business ideas to the press that covered the event, I saw a lot of iPads in use. That’s not something I can say about Galaxy Tabs, which were so scarce during the show. In fact I must have spotted 3-5 devices at most, not counting the ones on display at Samsung’s booth.

Overall it was a great show and since we covered all the hot devices hitting stores now or later this year, I thought I’d give you a sneak preview of what went on behind the curtains of MWC. The kind of stuff you don’t really hear about since it doesn’t concern new gadgets directly. But luckily I had my cameras with me at all times to capture some interesting, strange, and funny moments while I was walking the MWC 2011 halls.

Android Presence

Android was everywhere, in all shapes and sizes. It was even present on the floor to guide you through this continuously evolving Android world.

Mozilla Carriage Tools and the Fox

Mozilla was offering free rides at MWC, too bad I didn’t have time for such an adventure myself. And the Fox, for some reason, came out of hiding too to play with the folks at the show.

INQ Facebook Phone

I thought INQ wasn’t making any Facebook phones. As it turns out it was HTC that launched the Salsa and the ChaCha, two Android handsets with Facebook buttons, but INQ might still be cooking some special Facebook phone too.

MeeGo Engineer Testing a BlackBerry PlayBook

How else would you get to see what’s wrong with your platform than by going around to test what the competition has on display. This MeeGo engineer was certainly interested in testing the PlayBook as thoroughly as possible. I can only but wonder whether he checked out the Xoom or the Galaxy Tab 10.1 too.

Sony Ericsson Playing Real Life Sims

What better way of promoting your newly launched Sony Ericsson Xperia Play (PlayStation Phone) handset than by actually ordering some employees to play real life Sims during MWC. And these folks took an impressive tour of the venue acting like Sims as I encountered them a bunch of times.

Bring Your Own iMac to the Media Center

The Media Center barely had enough spots for the press to hook up their laptops to the web and send out their MWC 2011 updates. Just like I did. But it looks like somebody decided not to travel light and packed an actual iMac to the show in order to use it to work on editing videos and images right then and there. I knew you won’t believe me that’s why I have pictures:

Packed Keynotes

You thought that Media Center looked pretty packed? Well the keynotes and media events hosted by the MWC were equally full. And in the darkness you could easily spot everyone’s new mobile device, whether smartphone, tablet or laptop, being lit up. Too bad Cisco’s free Wi-Fi hotspots rather failed to deal with all the traffic!

Weird Association

While inspecting the gadgets at the Motorola booth I found an unusually weird association on one table. There they were, the brand new Xoom tablet, the Motorola Atrix 4G, playing peacefully with a MacBook Pro. And, just for the fun of it, there was also an Adobe sign, to make sure that we understand some Flash was present there. I call it the “Google, Apple and Adobe table”, something we don’t usually get to see at such shows.

Dancing Rehearsals

Well it’s not all about gadgets at the MWC, or any other show for that matter. It’s also about ladies handling gadgets during the show. Or about ladies rehearsing some sort of dancing for the MWC.

Or is it the Mobile World Catwalk?

MWC 2012 Dates

MWC will stay in Spain for one more year, at least, and considering what we saw this year, well, we can only be excited to watch this mobile business grow in the following months. In the mean time we have dates for next year’s event, so in case you’re a phone manufacturer, app developer, or you plan to start a business around mobile devices, then start planning ahead accordingly.