Mobile World Congress: Don't Call It a Phone Show
Summary
Mobile World Congress, which kicks off Monday in Barcelona, is the place to be for everyone who’s anyone in the mobile phone ecosystem, and increasingly that includes everyone whose anyone in the technology industry. Over the last few years the event and the industry have shifted from being about mobile phones to being about always-on connectivity. Mobile broadband has changed the value of the mobile ecosystem and thus the players who care about it. For example, keynote speakers this year include a U.S. cable company talking about its wireless deployment; Shantanu Narayen, president and CEO of Adobe (s adbe), presumably defending Flash; and Google’s (s goog) Eric Schmidt taking about the search engine’s plans to rule the mobile world and the usual array of operator and handset executives. Here’s a list of the big topics and what they means for the end user who just wants to surf the web anywhere he or she is: In other words, it’s gonna be big.