Mobile World Congress has become the trade show that doesn’t know it’s dead. With Samsung, Lenovo, and Qualcomm all backing out of the in-person conference in Barcelona, the global GSMA organization’s insistence on having a 50,000-person show in late June becomes more and more confusing.
To give you an idea of just how bad the situation is, I took Qualcomm’s 2019 map of halls 2 and 3 and crossed out all of the exhibitors who aren’t going to show. Hall 3, which is the most prestigious display hall, where the prominent OEMs hang out, is especially embarrassing.
LG, bizarrely, appears to be still committed to showing up in person, even though the company is backing out of the smartphone business. It could be using the show for meetings as it winds down its smartphone operation; if that’s its plan, it may not even build out a booth. I’ve heard that not even exhibitors can access the show floor map anymore, because the layout is so in flux.
Press- and analyst-wise, PCMag is not attending the show in person. Neither is Input, Android Police, Android Authority, Fortune, CNET, Moor Insights, Creative Strategies, IDC, Tirias Research, and many others, according to a Twitter thread started by Creative Strategies’ Carolina Milanesi.
But nothing’s changing, according to what the GSMA puts out publicly. The show must go on.
I need to say here that I am this show’s biggest fan. MWC has traditionally been the most valuable week of my year, where I discover the most, establish the most connections, and have the best time. It’s far better run than CES. Barcelona’s convention center is very well laid out, and the GSMA makes it easy to schedule top-notch meetings and make connections.
I want this show to come back, and I want to go back to it, desperately. But the GSMA cannot end the pandemic.
Pressure from the Spanish government is clearly playing a large role. According to AFP, Spain is demanding that 45 million tourists show up this year, half the number who came to the country in 2019. Spain even lifted its own corona-related entrance requirements for MWC visitors.
I’d also like to point out that the GSMA, who run the show, liked this tweet.
There’s been some talk about how MWC is really about meetings and connections, not the sort of flashy displays that attract press coverage, so therefore it could be fine without booths. That may be the case, but if you’re going for meetings and connections and have no access to Google, Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, Qualcomm, Microsoft, Intel, Facebook, Lenovo, or Sony, just to name a few, it seems like a much less appealing place to make connections.
There’s also been a lot of talk about how virtual events may be supplanting real-life events, but that’s not what’s killing MWC. I’ve talked to numerous press, vendors, and mobile players. Many of them want to get back to in-person meetings and communication. You’d also be surprised (or maybe not) that the travel and buildout costs for a show haven’t played a big role in decision-making in my off-the-record conversations. Rather, everybody just says that the pandemic is still going on in Spain, and thus they don’t want to go there.
I’ve attended a few “virtual trade shows” so far, and they’ve been really sad. They’re fine for watching presentations, but presentations are just the tip of an iceberg at a real show. No platform has yet managed to let people make the kinds of serendipitous connections and get the broad industry overviews they can get while walking a hall.
MWC, traditionally the biggest mobile industry event of the year, generally attracts more than 100,000 people to Barcelona each February. The February event has been cancelled two years running because of coronavirus; this year it was swapped to late June. According to Reuters, Spain has now vaccinated about 22% of its population—better than some other countries, but clearly not good enough for many people to embark on an imminent trip there.
The first actual in-person, international tech event may end up being IFA in Berlin in early September, although we’ll see how the pandemic is going at that point.
We’re still more than a month away from the supposed show, so there’s still time for the GSMA to bail. But if Spain decides that any show is better than no show, I hope the few hardy souls who attend are bringing their zombie-hunting gear.
