Mobile World Congress 2016: the top trends you need to know

For the 8th year running, our team went along to the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, got stuck in and has returned with all the juiciest tech stories you’ll want to know about. Here, Screen Interaction’s Head of sales, Claes Dahlstrand, gives his view on the trends to watch.

Claes, what were the stand-out trends for you?

That virtual reality and augmented reality is gaining ground is of course old news, but the exhibition convinced me of its importance even more. Above all, I think the technology has moved closer to real business benefits. That’s often the case with new technology ‒ initially we see a period of creativity and entrepreneurship where it’s tested in a number of different venues, with many fun and quirky examples of how to use the technology, most of which never in the end reach the mainstream market. That period is definitely over for VR and AR. They’re now entering a phase where business benefits on a large scale are becoming a reality.

Ericsson’s gigantic area at the fair focused to a large degree on 5G. The focus was not only on bandwidth, but perhaps even more on the extremely short response times that come with 5G, which for example make it is possible to control robots remotely with augmented reality and so-called haptic feedback. Response times in just one millisecond makes haptic feedback, which means you can feel what the machine is doing, possible even at a distance.

What trends might our clients and collaborators be interested in?

There were hundreds of great business models and opportunities that today’s digital services provide. Many cool startups showcased new IoT gadgets, applications and digital services that could easily be translated for our customers’ needs. The technical possibilities seem almost unlimited when walking around in such an environment. It appears that only the legal and economic restrictions set the limits right now.

Which trends do you think will continue to be hot in next year’s fair?

It might sound predictable, but next year we’ll see more of IoT, VR and AR – with even greater business benefits than this year. We’ll see more examples of how all of these new technologies have become a natural part of our reality, not least in the industry but also in ordinary people’s everyday lives. Autonomous cars and all sorts of automation based on these technologies and big data are already here, and a year is a long time in the technology universe.