Listen, it is likely not the best sign when a show runs out of breath on the first day. The opening salvo of the Mobile World Congress was led by Samsung in an event that touched some partnerships and spent the same amount of time teasing an upcoming event that actually saw the launch of some hardware. It’s hard to be confined to the GSMA, and I should anticipate all of this by reiterating that even in a normal year, it’s damn hard to hold an event. The cancellation of his flagship show last year had to be heartbreaking, and the decision to move on must have been too – albeit for dramatically different reasons?
It’s not that the show didn’t come with some wins. What’s this? Elon Musk recorded on video? This is pretty massive in any way, with all the standard preambles of “whatever you think of the guy”. Love him or hate him, you’ve heard of him and probably have extremely strong feelings for the guy in one way or another.
The Dogeking High Priest beamed in to speak to SpaceX StarLink. “To be completely honest, we are losing money at this terminal,” said Musk in an interview. “This terminal costs us more than $ 1,000, so of course I’m subsidizing the cost of the terminal.” It’s good that he has deep pockets.
He promised a new version of the company’s satellite “that will be significantly more powerful” next year.
Huawei has so far focused much more on connectivity than on the consumer – It’s important to get rid of this by adding that MWC is just as, if not more, a networking show, despite all the press that tends to focus on consumer device rollouts. The company launched a range of 5G network hardware, including several MIMO products.
Speaking of networks, I completely forgot to record this piece by ProWellTech parent-co (you know it right now). Verizon has released a number of 5G branded robots. The company emphasized the importance of cellular communications for future robot communication.
Here is CSO Rima Qureshi, quoted by Reuters, “5G will allow robots to connect to other robots and devices of all kinds in ways that were simply not possible before.”
Credit: Huawei
Let’s be honest, but mostly robots provide cool stage feed. As far as I can tell, the Boston Dynamics-esque four-legged friend was this bot from Ghost Robotics, which Verizon also unveiled at CES in January at CES (well, it must have set itself off):
If I had the choice, should I have hosted a personal event in Barcelona in the summer of 2021? No. No way. Did the GSMA feel it had a financial choice or a choice? That’s a much harder question to answer. If you’re an event and partnership company, even canceling a single big show is a shock to the system.
I’m going back and forth as to whether I’ll be doing more of these summaries during the show through Thursday. Definitely if more interesting things come up or if there is a video of Elon floating through the sparsely populated halls of the convention center or something. But I’m not holding my breath.
