It begins: Spain, sun, and Samsung
Good morning, Mobile World Congresspeople!
More than 100,000 telecom execs, industry analysts, tech bloggers, and sundry other device enthusiasts are about to descend on Barcelona for Mobile World Congress. This daily email from Quartz is your guide to the goings on, whether you are at the expo or following from afar.
The team at the Fira Gran Via includes reporter Mike Murphy, who once uploaded himself into an AI bot so he could chat with it; reporter Joon Ian Wong, Quartz’s crypto scooper-in-chief; and editor Jason Karaian, who likes to ask important people about how they spend their money. Send us your tips and tapas recommendations.
The future is bright: expect sunny skies and a high temperature of 15°C (59°F) today. If you haven’t hit the road yet, though, pack for less agreeable conditions—colder, wetter weather is on the way. Que lástima.
Setting the scene
The theme of MWC this year is “Creating a Better Future.” What’s wrong with things now? Mainly, that we don’t have 5G.
The next generation of mobile connectivity will dominate the show this year. There will be demos of futuristic 5G-enabled devices, and every bigwig on stage will explain how the new standard will, naturally, create a better future. (More on that below.)
Another major talking point is the future of chipmaker Qualcomm. It is fighting against a takeover bid by rival Broadcom worth well over $100 billion, spoiling the approach by trying to buy smaller semiconductor group NXP. And if that wasn’t enough to juggle, Qualcomm is also entangled in a legal tussle with Apple, which is rumored to be replacing its chips with ones with Intel or another manufacturer for the next generation of iPhones. Apple doesn’t come to MWC, but for this reason it will be a frequent subject of conversation among the chipmaking cognoscenti.
There will also be the usual flagship phone and device launches from just about every manufacturer not based in Cupertino. Barcelona this week is a reflection of what the world’s smartphone market is actually like, dominated by Chinese manufacturers instead of the Apple-Samsung hegemony seen in much of the West. All over the city, people are carrying phones from Huawei, Xiaomi, and others, and seemingly succeeding in getting through their day.
OMG 5G WTF
If you want to sound like you know what you’re talking about when it comes to 5G, knowingly drop one of these three acronyms into casual conversation:
1️⃣ Massive MIMO: This stands for Multiple-Input Multiple-Output, describing the vastly greater number of antennae that can fit on 5G base stations compared with what’s currently possible. These arrays could improve the use of radio spectrum by a factor of 22, research has found.
2️⃣ 3GPP: It sounds a little outdated now, but this stands for the Third Generation Partnership Project. It’s the technical body that coordinates development of the various connectivity standards, like 5G and its predecessors. As you (now) know, 3GPP is still working on the final 5G specifications in “Release 16,” which is due next December, so everything else is just marketing hype.
3️⃣ 3DBF: Three-dimensional beamforming is a software technique that allows the advanced antennae used in 5G base stations to transmit radio waves that find their targets more efficiently. For extra credit, pair this with mentions of massive MIMO arrays and—a bonus term—mmWave (that’s Millimeter Wave) spectrum bands.
What to watch for today
Handsets, handsets, and more handsets. Official programming doesn’t start until tomorrow, but handset makers try to make an early splash with high-profile launches for the press…
Samsung will unveil its latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S9, in the evening. The Korean tech giant sat out last year’s MWC, as it was still smarting from the embarrassment of its Note 7 phones’ unfortunate tendency to explode. After releasing a series of exceptional devices in 2017, this year’s S9 will hope to build on the momentum. It’s expected to feature a sharper camera, stereo speakers, and, for some reason, 3D selfie emojis. Watch the livestream here, at 6pm local time (noon ET).
Nokia, by contrast, garnered glowing press at the expo last year with a reimagined 3310 released by HMD Global, the Finnish company that licenses the venerable mobile brand. CNet reckons that a smart home product will be the focus. But to recapture the retro nostalgia it stoked last year, perhaps a touchscreen pager or an internet-enabled rotary phone is in the offing? Watch the livestream here, at 4pm local time (10am ET).
Huawei’s kickoff event follows a colorful keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, where CEO Richard Yu went off-script to rant at US carriers for their unwillingness to carry the Chinese company’s phones. (Huawei has struggled for years to break into the US over its alleged ties to the Chinese military, and hours before his speech AT&T had pulled out of a distribution deal.) Will things go more smoothly this time around?
Away from the world of phones, Intel will show off its Olympics gear at a briefing in the morning on Montjuïc, the hill that overlooks the city. At the Winter Games, it worked with carrier KT to set up a trial 5G network for various virtual reality and immersive video streams, drone light shows, and other gizmos made possible by superfast wireless connections. The chip giant will also demo 5G-enabled laptops it’s developing with Dell, Microsoft, Lenovo, and HP.
🎉 Party planner 🎉 Mobile Sunday, MWC’s unofficial curtain-raiser, starts at 6pm local time. Described as the “premier networking soirée,” the event is part panel debates and part, er, Brooklyn: a DJ, food trucks, and free-flowing beer are among the attractions. Pace yourself—there will be more late nights ahead.
Chart interlude
You knew this already, but these days the mobile internet is the internet.
Quartz Announcement
Join us for a tour of the floor on Wednesday. Quartz’s European news editor Lianna Brinded will be leading a tour highlighting top emerging tech trends at Mobile World Congress and the power of diversity. Sign up here to join.
Further reading
Follow all of Quartz’s coverage from MWC during the week here. For even more news and views from the expo, check out Mobile World Live, The Verge, Engadget, and CNet. (CNet also has coverage in Spanish, as does El País. For Catalan, there’s El Nacional.)
And for something completely different, here are three recent stories from Quartz that are worth your while:
How do you design an office for robots? One of the world’s top trading firms, XTX Markets, doesn’t have any human traders. When it started planning a new headquarters for its human employees in London, designers looked to sci-fi series like Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, and Tron for inspiration. John Detrixhe got an exclusive look at the new digs.
The best books for learning statistics—for free. Two downloadable books make tricky statistical concepts like “logical regression” and “support vector machines” intelligible, writes Dan Kopf. They embrace the concept of “statistical learning,” which mixes old-fashioned theory with breakthroughs made possible by machine learning.
The future of curling is Asian. A concerted approach to maximizing medal hauls means that curling is now a sport that’s squarely in the sights of countries like South Korea, Japan, and China. Echo Huang, Tripti Lahiri, and Isabella Steger trace the circuitous development of the sport, which originated from 16th-century Scotland.
Our best wishes for an inspiring day at the expo. Please send any news, tips, spare SIM cards, and obscure acronyms to us, Jason, Joon, and Mike. The best way to keep up with news while you’re on the go is the Quartz app for iPhone and Android.