The variety of themes that the MWC attendee finds is almost as infinite as what is at their fingertips with their mobile phone. Devices and connectivity continue to occupy a central position at the fairgrounds, but the focuses of attention have multiplied and are shifting towards sectoral interests in areas such as mobility, health, finance or entertainment, among a long list. The general director of the GSMA himself, Mats Granryd, defines the MWC today as a meeting that is about “much more than mobile” and positions it as a meeting point for a multitude of sectors.
56% of registered attendees last year were from industries adjacent to the mobile ecosystem, and the figure this year may be even higher. In this sense, the director of the GSMA Innovation Foundry, Richard Cockle, highlights that “as digital technologies have become ubiquitous in all areas of life, telecommunications has transformed into a horizontal industry that is now associated with all sectors of the world connected.” In this way, under the same roof there are operators such as Telefónica along with aircraft manufacturers such as Airbus, as well as companies from seemingly traditional sectors such as mining and agriculture.
As it happens, this year there is even a prototype of a flying car as a future proposal among the many brought by the 1,100 international experts who will participate in conferences and round tables and the 2,400 exhibiting companies present at an MWC whose motto is “Future first (the future, first). Much more immediately present are autonomous drones for indoors and omnipresent artificial intelligence, a transversal issue on the lips of all agents in the sector in recent months and that will be a predominant aspect in the room that occupies the eight pavilions of the Gran Via venue. of Fira de Barcelona between February 26 and 29.
All of this also happens with the push for the definitive return of the Chinese congressmen after four years of absence. Although large companies such as Huawei – the exhibitor with the most contracted square meters – returned in 2022, they did so mainly with workers located in Europe. The professionals who have an office in the Asian giant have been the great absentees from the post-pandemic editions and this year they are already expected with the strength of yesteryear.
Their presence is relevant in numerical terms for the congress, but also from a geopolitical point of view. Barcelona thus once again stands as a neutral city that acts for four days as a meeting point in Europe for Americans and Asians willing to do business, which is, after all, where the companies that choose to attend come. to the MWC.
More than half of those attendees are top-level executives who arrive in the Catalan capital with a busy agenda to close deals with a few zeros associated with a signature and a handshake. There will also be more than a hundred country delegations on the ministerial program.
The organization hopes to exceed last year's 88,500 attendees and reach 95,000 this year, although they are more concerned with capturing quality than quantity. All the available space is once again occupied in the eighteenth edition that takes place at Fira de Barcelona, and the GSMA is already thinking about the great growth that it will be able to make a reality from 2026, when the new 60,000 square meter pavilion opens, which It will allow the fairgrounds to reach 300,000 square meters of total surface area.
