Speaking at the opening of the press this year, Samsung UK’s James Kitto said, “It’s great that MWC is back.” “And for everyone at Samsung, it’s great to be back at MWC.” Clearly, what it means to be “back” in 2021 is a completely different matter. Samsung was certainly one of the key players in the industry that announced that it would not be taking part in this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It was hard not to see an echo of last year’s event, when the key players, one by one, forced GSMA to cancel the event altogether, withdrawing.
This year’s event differs for a number of reasons, from the late February / early March MWC’s traditional deadline to the arrival of COVID-19 in the EU. For the other, this time, the organizing body had one more year to prepare. The easiest route is what CTA did with CES and was completely. The first fully virtual CES certainly ran into a lot of problems, but there may be complicated things to order with the highest order when trying an item in person before the vaccine is widely introduced in the United States.
COVID-19 is still a concern in Spain – as it is in most parts of the world. GSMA has decided to move forward with this event this year after a few months delay from the standard date of MWC. The company put in place all sorts of security measures, but judging from the first few videos taken at the event, social distance shouldn’t be a problem on the show floor this year. It seems safe to assume that “participating” in the event is what most of them doing in practice, a list that vendors include them as well.
Samsung is one of the high-profile companies that have hosted pre-recorded virtual press conferences. Virtually though, even organizations are seeing the value of engaging with these types of events, or perhaps the appropriate worth encouraging ongoing partnerships with organizations. Samsung’s event was instantly the biggest of the day, but the pressure seemed a bit higher than the venue. The biggest news of the press conference was the expansion of Google’s announced partnership with I / O last month, while much of the rest pointed to an unpacked event later this summer. .
