William Rusack, head of mobile at Carat, offers his personal take on Mobile World Congress.

With the furore of Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp still reverberating around the globe anyone who is anyone in mobile, include Mr “Moneybags” Zuckerberg himself, headed to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress.

As with anything this lauded, even the most optimistic person can be excused a little pessimism of whether it will actually live up to the hype.

But with the combination of technology big and small surrounded by a beautiful city, a chance to explore and learn in the day and catch up with new and old work friends in the evening I can see why it’s held in such high regard.

As you might expect it was to this techy side of mobile that much of the conference was dedicated, so I was looking forward to seeing how the media and marketing side of me might be excited.

This happened when I came across a new platform called Buffer – one simple dashboard that aggregates the social networking sites you have. It monitors what you’re looking at and advises what articles or posts would be most suitable for one of the many social networking platforms out there. You can even select each of the individual social networks together and schedule the posts you want to send out. It will allow you to review your activity and let you know performance, likes, sharebility and views. For companies looking to really increase their social presence and understand the effectiveness and opportunities of their offering, Buffer looks like it could be a very useful tool.

Social media
Sticking with social media, you obviously couldn’t miss Facebook and the clamouring for “The Zuck’s” speech was pretty intense. Although interesting, this wasn’t what struck me as the most intriguing development in the social arena (especially post the Facebook and WhatsApp merger).

What will actually have the biggest impact on the market could be how the bigger applications out there are gearing up to take on the likes of Vodafone and Telefonica by becoming operator-style companies themselves, and from what I could see it looks like they’re more than capable of winning the battle.

Take King.com – a business that launched the addictive game Candycrush which has around 100m users playing every day. Combining masses of data and users gives them a strong foothold and competitive edge. Combine this with their connected world, and these international companies are growing hundreds of times faster than tech companies did a few years back. It took online websites 10 years to amass 1m users; it took applications four years to do the same.

Big Data
The general theme of ‘Big Data’ was also consistent, but with big data you need confidence. The first thought needs to be around how brands and agencies sift through all of it, then there’s the cost for the users, in particular the emerging world and finally there’s the trust. We can take these leaps forward in technology and data, but if security and hacking starts to become a real threat we will see a significant halt to this exponential growth we’ve been seeing over the last few years.

The good news is when wandering around the stands security and infrastructure specific for mobile – and not borrowed from online – was clear for everyone to see.
This year the emerging markets were front of mind for many businesses at the conference. Facebook’s ‘No handset left behind’ or ‘zerofacebook.com’ shows it’s serious about making sure no corner is left unturned – parts of Africa and India where both the prohibitive cost and access to the internet prevents people being connected have had a lot of focus. Facebook has been working on platforms that make older feature phones display smartphone style displays and they are leaning on operators to lower the cost of data or make it free.

Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox browser, also demo’d a smartphone, not yet launched but that could launch this year with a super cheap price tag of £25. The spec is not outlandish, but what do you expect for that price?

Chinese presence
The Chinese presence within the conference was also very noticeable. Huawei, a fairly unknown manufacturer in the west was the headline sponsor. It is a very serious player; it launched five devices at MWC, including two tablets, two pieces of wearable tech and an all singing-and-dancing smartphone. Capitalising on China’s economic leaps forward and investing in expansive R&D programmes has put the company high up in the manufacturer stakes.

I spoke to representatives of ZTE, another Chinese business, to try and understand its position. At first I thought it was the language barrier between my counterpart, but no – ZTE is both a handset manufacturer and an operator. Powerful stuff.

Moving on to more handset-based trends, there seemed to be a, ahem, wave of waterproof phones being launched. Sony launched one and Samsung also launched some. The Samsung S5 is being touted as water-resistant, but not waterproof.

If you do fancy taking your exisiting phone snorkling or skinny dipping, another product I saw in a section called The Lab was a substance you actually coat your phone in that makes it waterproof. In technical terms you nano-coat your phone with the chemical and lo and behold you can drop it down the toilet while drunk and do no damage.

Nokia has shown us that it is serious about taking smart, versatile devices to a price point that is very attainable. The X range, priced from £80 to £109, has strong functionality and utilises the Android OS, but is still layered with Windows interface, still linking to Microsoft’s services like Skype and Outlook.

Connected city
On the more futuristic side of things, the connected city is an area of the venue that gives you a view into the future, while also highlighting what’s possible in the present. What stood out was the effect mobile devices can offer lifestyle and health. Wearable tech linking people to care and health, whether it’s alerting you when something’s wrong, or if you’re feeling brave, simply advising you or your doctors to your lifestyle.

A particular favourite of mine was Oral B’s demo of the phone syncing via Bluetooth to the toothbrush. It tells you how to improve brushing, maps all the data so you can bring your phone along to your dentist and streams content to the phone. So whilst brushing for the minimum two minutes, you’re not bored. It shows us no daily activity need be without content and brands reaching out to us.

Similarly, here were plenty of demos of devices syncing with the home, cars and other consumer electronics. The presence of connected cars was evident; I spoke with GM about its developer programme, a platform to allow developers to design and work with a car manufacturer, helping connectivity, safety, location and informed driving. GM has already signed up bookings.com, TuneIn Radio and the weatherchannel.com to name a few. It demonstrates how traditional brands are continuing to be the pathway to app partnerships and mobile technologies.

William Rusack is head of mobile at Carat