The World is Flat and it is Mobile!

By Gonzalo Bustillos

As MWC 2010 draws to a close for another year, I took the opportunity to walk through all the exhibits for the first time since I arrived in Barcelona. I’ve been attending this conference for the last few years; there is something in the air that is different this time. It is the buzz about the promise of the lifestyle-on-the-go finally coming true. All the ingredients seem to be finally converging: high speed networks with 100Mbps download speeds, an incredible array of devices from phones to slates to PCs that can fulfill the mobile experience of anyone that is on the go, all sorts of mobile applications and of course, the magic of software that is making all of that happen. The Windows Phone 7 Series announcement got Microsoft the spotlight as both believers and skeptics rushed to decode the message, and, there was a real sense of excitement about Microsoft in the mobile space. A comment I repeatedly heard in the hallways around Microsoft’s booth was “Microsoft is back in the [smartphone] game.” The Verizon and Skype alliance announcement also created some buzz; as it signals a shift in the relationships of mobile operators and VoIP providers, and with Google’s “Mobile First” assertion indicating that mobile is their primary focus, it makes me to think that convergence is finally happening! Phones are today’s computers and computers are behaving more like phones. The years ahead will certainly present a great marketplace for opportunity and innovation. I can’t wait to see how far we will have got by MWC 2011.