Mobile World Congress - day 3 (and final)

Wednesday is the unofficial last day of the congress. The official one is tomorrow, but nobody is there, they just stretch it to four days to give more people the opportunity to speak (and therefore pay for exhibiting). As the last day, it is the one where people chat about "was this one better than last one? What about Cannes?" and so on.

My takes:

1. It was better than last year and the one before. 2008 is the year of mobile 2.0. The year of the Mobile Internet. Everyone is getting ready for it.
2. There were few good hardware news. One was Modu. A very cool idea of a device that can have many "covers". The difference is that the covers transform the device from a smartphone to a dumbphone to a music player. Very interesting concept. Every carrier can build its cover and differentiate. And it is low cost. Wins the HW of the conference award from me.
3. There was a lot of femtocell. It is happening for real. This is the way mobile operators get in your house and have you pay for them not to upgrade their antennas. Very clever. It makes a lot of sense. Zero installation troubles, no changes on your phone, five bars everywhere in the house. It will spread like a virus if the operators realize they should not charge for anything but the device, since it makes their service sticky and high quality.
4. Location location location. Everywhere. It is happening. Finally. Nokia itself revealed four devices this week. All with GPS. Get ready for mobile advertising location based.

That's it for 2008. See you next year in Barcelona!