Mobile World Congress, the biggest event in the mobile industry, is currently going on in its usual venue, Barcelona, Spain and is scheduled to end on March 1. Mobile World Congress brings together the press, manufacturers and vendors of mobile and wireless technology, mobile operators and content providers from all over the world. The conference is organized by the GSM Association, the largest mobile industry association. Here are quotes from the GSMA about what the association does and about Mobile World Congress.

The term “Mobile World Congress” includes everything that happens during the four days of the event. There are many components that make up the event, including a conference programme, an exhibition, our programme for app developers called App Planet, an awards programme and great networking opportunities

The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide. Spanning more than 220 countries, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world’s mobile operators, as well as more than 200 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset makers, software companies, equipment providers, Internet companies, and media and entertainment organisations.

Last year we failed to cover MWC 2011 and although we missed out the people who attend most certainly did not. Last year according to the GSMA stats was the biggest ever for MWC.

Mobile World Congress 2011 was by all accounts a record-breaking year: Highest-ever total attendance: more than 60,000; Highest-ever number of CEOs in attendance: more than 3,000; Largest-ever number of exhibitors: 1,400; Largest-ever number of press: 2,900+ press members representing 1,500 media outlets; Largest-ever gathering of Mobile App Developers: more than 12,000

This year mobile is set to be even bigger as mobile technology proliferates even more of our lives. As more and more people adopt smartphones and tablets for both working on the go and entertainment and lifestyle activities, mobile has become essential. As we cover Mobile World Congress, we will try and focus the coverage on the companies, brands and technologies which will have the biggest impact in Africa and Ghana.

We will focus on providing an overview post of all the major announcements and then go into details for the ones we feel we need to dig into deeper for our readers. We will therefore be covering established brands like Samsung, Nokia, LG and also brands like Huawei, ZTE which focus on middle tier hardware.

More power, more speed, longer battery life. These are the main themes as phones with Quad Core Tegra 3 chips, mobile radio system on chips which support faster mobile broadband technlogies (like HSPA+) and LTE. ZTE is the brand with the most traction this year and they had a slew of both Android and Windows Phone announcements. ZTE is the brand with the most traction this year and they had a slew of both Android and Windows Phone announcements.

After the hectic announcements from Day 1 and Day 2 (and Day 0, a lot of press happened before Day 1), we think Android, as expected is the big show at MWC 2012. However Nokia has also made a really big splash for something that is intriguing. A feature phone albeit with a new type of camera. Their Windows Phone handset aimed at the mass market is also a surprise hot item with the international press as it has the potential to take Windows Phone to the masses in emerging economies, like Ghana. Intel also has gotten into the low end market and even more importantly the mobile market with its Smartphone Atom based processors.

Another of the interesting aspects of Mobile World Congress is the awards programme, the Global Mobile Awards. In 2012, there are 32 individual awards segmented into eight categories, covering all aspects of the mobile industry. Although some of the awards and their nominees be outside the mainstream interest, Best Embedded Mobile Device (Non-Handsets), others like Best Mobile App for Consumers and Best Smartphone are things we talk (and argue) about, a lot, if not every day.

Here are the nominees from these two categories I think will interest our readers. Check out the rest at the nominees page. We’ll post the final results when they are decided.

There is just so much information flowing out of the event that we may need help on this one. Tell us about a particular service, technology or product announced that will affect Ghana somehow we should write about? We are open to guest posts from you out there.

Reach out to me just2izy [at] gmail dot com.

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