As many of you know, Mobile World Congress, one of the largest and most prestigious tech conventions in the world, is happening next week. It is a spectacle of all the latest and greatest in smartphone development… or at least that’s what it’s supposed to be. You see, MWC has a problem – it’s become so big and so dominant and so loud, in terms of media coverage, that many of the big players avoid it altogether.<\/p>\n
LG has already announced their new headlining phone, the LG G Pro 2, which is a phablet designed to compete with the Note series. HTC has said they’ll announce their new HTC One in March, well after the noise has died down. Microsoft and the rest of the Windows Phone ecosystem are skipping MWC and waiting until Microsoft’s BUILD conference. And the biggest fish of all in mobile, Apple, never bothers to turn up.<\/p>\n
As a result of all this, MWC has boiled down to a couple of the top Android manufacturers (Samsung, Sony), and companies trying to show they belong, either because of region (Chinese manufacturers ZTE, Xaomi, etc.), or scale (Mozilla, Jolla, Blackphone). All this indicates exactly what MWC has become – a launch event for the very biggest (Samsung Galaxy S5 this time around), with all of the second tier companies avoiding the marketing juggernaut and announcing either early, or late.<\/p>\n
The only company that’s really tackling Samsung head on at MWC is Nokia, but rather than do it with a WP8 device, they’re doing it with a bargain basement Android phone, one that’s been heavily customized to strip out all of Google’s services, and replace them with Microsoft and Nokia versions. But even Nokia won’t really go head to head with Samsung, given the vast (over $500) price gulf between their devices.<\/p>\n
All of this, then, explains Mobile World Congress in a nutshell – awesome for gadget lovers, but entirely skippable for companies. There’s too much noise, too little signal, and marketing departments are staying away in droves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As many of you know, Mobile World Congress, one of the largest and most prestigious tech conventions in the world,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":81,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/MWC.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lA9R-L","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":50,"url":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/?p=50","url_meta":{"origin":47,"position":0},"title":"MWC – Wednesday Update","date":"February 25, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"As I had predicted with the previous Mobile World Congress post, there really hasn't been a great deal of buzz produced by MWC this year. Yes, Samsung announced the Galaxy S5, but it's a technical iteration of the S4, rather than anything groundbreaking. In some ways, this is a sign\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mobile"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gdgtfix.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/MWC.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":158,"url":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/?p=158","url_meta":{"origin":47,"position":1},"title":"The world without an iPhone\u00a0","date":"January 15, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The linked article (see below) postulates that the world without an iPhone would be a more interesting one. My views mostly concur. Today, the two largest phone manufacturers and the ones who dictate the market (or have, anyway) are Apple and Samsung, and they\u2019ve *never* put high end hardware in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mobile"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gdgtfix.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/porsche-design-p9981-blackberry-smartphone-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":21,"url":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/?p=21","url_meta":{"origin":47,"position":2},"title":"The Lumia Icon – Too Late, Too Late","date":"February 13, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The\u00a0Lumia Icon, is, by all accounts, a wonderful phone. It's the first device, other than the Lumia 1520, that sees Windows Phone\u00a08 match (and on a few specs, exceed), the cutting edge of the Android market. There is, however, one large fly in the ointment - despite being an exceedingly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In Depth"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gdgtfix.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Featured.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":194,"url":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/?p=194","url_meta":{"origin":47,"position":3},"title":"HTC leaves the Entry-Level Phone Market","date":"February 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The once market leading HTC has been forced to pull out of the less profitable end of the cellphone business after years of failed high end models. Given the continual push of the Chinese manufacturers both upmarket and into wider areas of business than HTC themselves, it's likely that HTC\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In Depth"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gdgtfix.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/img_1471.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":126,"url":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/?p=126","url_meta":{"origin":47,"position":4},"title":"Huawei vs Google’s Strategy","date":"October 13, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"You may be wondering why Google appears to be going with HTC for this year's Pixel phones instead of Huawei. Wasn't the Nexus 6P a rousing success? Apparently, Huawei and Google aren't getting along quite as well as you might think. An Android Police source understands that Huawei bristled at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mobile"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gdgtfix.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/q_100.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":450,"url":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/?p=450","url_meta":{"origin":47,"position":5},"title":"LG is quitting the smartphone business","date":"April 5, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Yet another company falls to the pressures of the smartphone industry and how little profit there is to be wrung out of it unless you are Samsung or Apple. I can't say LG made anything I was particularly enamored of, but watching the old guard be forced out even while\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In Depth"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gdgtfix.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/LG-Wing-swivel.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49,"href":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions\/49"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/81"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}