In the corridors of Fira de Barcelona, an atmosphere was breathed yesterday that was more similar to the editions prior to the pandemic than to the last two appointments of the Mobile World Congress (MWC), still marked by the restrictions imposed against Covid. The image was not yet that of the inaugural session of 2019, the year in which the attendance record was broken with 109,000 visitors, but the eight pavilions of the Gran Via venue in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona) took the form of an international high-level congress in the first of the four days that the show will last.
The MWC stopped being a mobile fair a long time ago, but these devices still have their power of attraction. Phones linked to augmented reality glasses, such as those from Xiaomi, or rollable and folding phones such as the TCL Fold 'n Roll, attracted many glances and questions among the public.
But the great bet of Mobile is already disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, the metaverse, immersive reality and even 6G, with the permission of 5G, still with a long way to go. The motto chosen for this edition, Velocity. Unleashing Tomorrow's technology today (Speed. Unleashing tomorrow's technology today), is quite a declaration of intent of what GSMA (the organizing employers' association) wants its salon to be.
The big technology firms have one of their main showcases at the Barcelona event. And this is how the Chinese giant Huawei understands it, whose mammoth stand in the first pavilion of the fairgrounds seems like a response to the US trade blockade. A total of 9,000 square meters and almost 2,000 of outdoor garden resemble what would be a sub-pavilion inside hall 1 in which the company presents its most recent advances in the cloud or cybersecurity.
The lines of people waiting in front of immersive experiences are already a general trend of the fair. The stand of the public-private foundation Mobile World Capital Barcelona, visited by King Felipe VI both during the institutional walk in the morning and in a private tour in the afternoon, gives the opportunity to combine the physical and virtual world to put himself in the Antonio Rebollo's skin lighting the inaugural cauldron of the 1992 Olympic Games or that of the singer of the music group Izal during a concert at the Palau Sant Jordi.
Cisco Systems and microchips also grabbed some of the opening day headlines. After doing so with executives from Meta and Orange, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, met in the morning with the President and CEO of the US company, Chuck Robbins. The meeting was not accidental. Cisco announced last November that it will open its first microchip design center in the European Union in Barcelona. "We are working to make Spain a key player in the semiconductor value chain thanks to the PERTE Chip," said the head of government after his appointment with the head of the multinational.
Felipe VI also showed interest in this telecommunications company. On the institutional tour that he led, halfway between the Telefónica and Vodafone stands, the Head of State made an unscheduled stop at the Cisco exhibition space.
As in the last edition, the application of communication technology in the field of health has its reserved space in this year's Mobile. The Versius Robot for minimally invasive surgery from the company CMR Surgical or Rob Surgical's robotic system that allows hybrid operations between the surgeon and the machine are two examples of high-precision interventions for the operating rooms of the future.
The ninth edition of 4YFN (Four Years From Now) deserves a separate chapter, now definitively integrated as part of Mobile. The area dedicated to startups houses, in this edition, more than 700 companies from 35 countries and a thousand registered investors.
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