Mobile World Congress has descended on Barcelona for what is expected to be another record-breaking year. Although the show only officially opened on Monday morning, several major exhibitors get their retaliation in early by hosting massive press announcements on Sunday.
Samsung used Sunday to announce the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+, the latest iteration of its flagship smartphone. With a strapline of “The Camera. Reimagined” the smartphone’s capabilities as a communications device appear to be of secondary importance.
Monday saw the launch of the Xperia XZ2 by Sony. Again, the launch announcement focused on the camera with the claim that it’s the first smartphone to shoot in 4K video in HDR. Both the Galaxy S9 and Xperia XZ2 also offer video capture at 960 frames per second to give users the ability record clips for play back in super slow-motion.
One of Monday’s conference sessions, “Value Creation & Investment in Content”, explored the challenges and opportunities for telcos to become content players. Mark Britt, CEO and Co-founder of iFlix, the OTT content provider carving out a very successful business in Asia, and Jean Coffey, Senior Director Business Development at Jukin Media which helps user generated content creators to maximise their audiences and revenue potential, both talked about how UGC content is becoming increasingly professionalised. The advanced camera capabilities of the new devices from Samsung, Sony and many other smartphone suppliers tie into this trend and will appeal to vlogging social media influencers.
In the opening keynote session, Kazuhiro Yoshizawa, CEO of NTT DOCOMO talked about how the Japanese operator is already working with diverse partners to ensure that new 5G services are available in time for the launch of its 5G network. His prediction is that uplink video will account for a much more significant proportion of traffic on 5G networks than has been the case on 4G and 3G networks.
So video appears to be central to the future of mobile.
