Every year the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is the place to be for everyone in the mobile business. All the new gadgets, applications and possibilities are exposed by the leading manufacturers and companies in the business. 

Some highlights and proceedings of the MWC 2010:

• Competition between operators, manufacturers and developers
  
  Mobile phone manufacturers increasingly have to share their revenues with software suppliers. Where the hardware as well as the software of the mobile phone used to be developed by the same manufacturer, now more and more of the market is dominated by the combination of a hardware manufacturer and a software developer like for example Windows Mobile and Google’s Android. The only function of operators become the transportation  of mobile data.
  
  This means that the revenue will be split between three different players: software producers earn for software and downloadable applications, operators for traffic and manufacturers solely for the hardware. There is an ongoing struggle between the three parties since they all want to gain a larger piece of the pie. We can see that from different initiatives that were introduced at the MWC:
  
  
  • The initiative of 24 large operators with over 3 billion customers across the globe have come together to launch an open international applications platform. This is an attempt to gain back the intitiave on application stores from the ones like Apple, Nokia and Microsoft.
    
    
  • The launch of the joint-developed operating system of Nokia and Intel called MeeGo. MeeGo replaces nokia’s current operating system and can be used for phones, tablets, TV’s and other mobile devices.
    
    
  • The launch of Google’s own Phone the Nexus one earlier this year.
  • The launch of the new Windows Mobile version (see below)
    
    
• 4G in the Netherlands
  
  4G comes to the Netherlands. 4G is a faster alternative to 3G, which means mobile internet will increase in speed. In a few months the frequencies will be auctioned. The Scandinavian countries already have LTE (one of the variants of 4G along with WiMax) but in the Netherlands it will be only available from 2012.
  
  
  
• Windows Phone 7:
  
  Windows launches a new version of it’s mobile operating system which is totally different from it’s predecessors. The windows-like environment of Windows mobile is replaced by a totally new, fresh and easy to use interface. Finally Windows creates an environment for mobile phones that is usable for everybody but in my opinion Windows again misses the boat since Apple and Android are way ahead..
• Google & Android
  
  A lot of new phones were launched based on Google’s Android operating system. Among those are Acer, Motorola, Sony Ericsson Xperia and HTC.
  
  This increases the power of Google and increases the market share (even by 100% in the last quarter) of Android which fits Google’s mobile strategy. Google expects that the mobile advertising market will be much larger than their current advertising market according to Eric Schmidt CEO of Google during his talk at the MWC. Mobile will be Google’s core priority.
  
  Maybe advertising is not the only opportunity Google aims at. Mobile payments also might be an interesting market for Google.
  
  
  
  
• Puma smartphone
  
  Puma launches a new mobile smartphone. The phone produced by Sagem has multiple special functions such as a compass, stopwatch, step-counter and GPS tracker and an altered operating system. The most special gimmick is the solar panel on the back.