Quiz Of The Week: Mobile World Congress

Mobile phones © Fernando Gonzalez S, Shutterstock 2012

What do you know about the most important mobile event on the planet?

Mobile World Congress (MWC), taking place in Barcelona next week, is by far the largest annual event for the mobile industry.

This year, 1,500 exhibitors will fill over 70,500 square metres with their wares. We can’t tell you how many people will attend MWC in 2013, but we do know that last year the event attracted a 67,000-strong crowd, including 3,500 members of the C-suite.

The theme of this year’s gathering is ‘New Mobile Horizon’, and of course, TechWeekEurope has a relevant quiz at the ready.

Most Wonderful Congress

MWC 2013 offers more keynotes, seminars and product launches than you can shake a mobile phone at. The event will take place in Barcelona, but after last year’s record-breaking attendance, the old venue has been traded for a new state-of-the-art facility – Fira Gran Via.

 Mobile phones © Ryan Jorgensen -Last year, we saw a 41 megapixel mobile camera, Intel’s first ever smartphone chip, and the world’s fastest smartphone, created by China’s Huawei. But the industry has moved on quickly, and yesterday’s flagships are today’s boring mid-market products.

Just 12 months ago, a quad-core processor in a smartphone was a strong selling point. Now, it is almost a basic requirement. At the last MWC, LTE was still “space-age technology”. By now, many people (well, mostly city dwellers) have already tested the download speeds of up to 300 Mbit/s.

The list of speakers for this year’s event reads like ‘Who’s Who’ of the mobile industry and includes chief executives of AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, Vodafone and Ericsson, along with successful representatives of the start up culture, such as Drew Houston, founder and CEO of Dropbox, Dennis Crowley, founder and CEO of Foursquare, and Marc Dillon, recently appointed CEO of Jolla.

This year’s event will be the first to showcase an integrated range of mobile NFC services throughout Fira Gran Via and city of Barcelona. NFC touch points will be present around the exhibition, rewarding those who ‘tap’ with instant access to information and various incentives.

A careful reader will have spotted that we recently gave away ten tickets to MWC 2013. Look out for similar promotions in the future.

So how much do you know about Mobile World Congress?

Take our quiz!

And if you like it, try some of the others.