What to expect at Mobile World Congress 2012

LONDON (MarketWatch) — While all roads don’t lead to Spain, ones that do will be clogged with the wireless-telecommunications executives next week.

Revenue-building strategies for mobile-phone operators, financial services in a mobile world and how to capture more of the connected consumer’s time and money — these are just some of the topics likely to be front and center when 60,000 delegates from the mobile-telecoms industry descend on Barcelona for the annual Mobile World Congress.

The agenda-setting event, which kicks off in the Catalan city on Feb. 27 and runs to March 1, is where operators, handset manufacturers, content providers, advertising gurus and, increasingly, Internet players and other assorted members of the nearly $2 trillion wireless complex gather to stoke the flames of the arms race for the most coveted devices, software, mobile services, technology and brands.

According to Neil Mawston, a telecoms analyst at Strategy Analytics, most companies at Mobile World Congress will be looking to explain one of two things: “why they haven’t done as well as they thought, or what they will be doing differently in order to do better.”

And they’ll be looking to do that in the context of one of this year’s big, overarching themes, Mawston said: convergence.

“There’s been talk of all parts of the fixed, portable and mobile worlds as well as hardware and software services colliding and inter-competing for years. But it really hasn’t happened in the real world. Now it is,” he added. “Almost every device on Earth right now is either computerizing or mobilizing. Whereas in the past you would only see traditional telephony firms at Mobile World Congress, now you’ll see car players, Web companies, marketing firms. Today, Google is increasingly competing with Nokia and Vodafone and all kinds of mobile-phone players.”

But Mobile World Congress 2012 isn’t just a show about convergence. The battle for dominance across a range of other telecoms-sector-related channels from smartphone operating systems to the networked car will also be hotly fought.

Below are some key areas and topics that experts will be watching closely during the show:

Analysts say that thin phones could be a staple of this year’s Mobile World Congress, echoing design moves seen at the Consumer Electronics Show for tablets, TVs and Ultrabook PCs. Taiwan’s HTC Corp. /quotes/zigman/301560 TW:2498 +0.16%  is expected to refresh its portfolio of phones, Finland’s Nokia Corp. /quotes/zigman/162154/quotes/nls/nok NOK -0.36%  could update its entry-level Asha Windows Phone, while South Korea’s Samsung /quotes/zigman/189458 SSNLF +6.39%  has already said it won’t be releasing the follow-up to its successful Galaxy S II device. Research In Motion Ltd. /quotes/zigman/18534/quotes/nls/rimm RIMM +0.07%   /quotes/zigman/18555 CA:RIM +0.34%  is not expected to unveil its BlackBerry 10 devices. Several handset firms, including South Korea’s LG, could display LTE (Long-Term Evolution, a form of 4G, or fourth-generation, wireless) devices. Super-fast quad-core processors are also likely to appear on several manufacturers’ phones. On the tablet side, LTE and quad-core will also feature. There could be a move to lower-priced models, taking a page out of Amazon.com Inc.’s /quotes/zigman/63011/quotes/nls/amzn AMZN -0.94%  Kindle Fire.

The smartphone and tablet poster child will stay the course with its tradition of eschewing the trade-show circuit and not make an appearance in Barcelona. Still, as one side of the smartphone-ecosystem-war partnership with Google Inc.’s /quotes/zigman/93888/quotes/nls/goog GOOG -0.30%   Android, Apple Inc.’s /quotes/zigman/68270/quotes/nls/aapl AAPL +0.65%  silent presence at the show will be all but tangible. Approximately 125 million smartphones and 20 million tablets were sold in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to research firm Enders Analysis, and “every month the average Apple iOS user spends about a dollar on apps.” Android, according to Enders, “has been far less successful in creating a paid ecosystem and is in danger of splintering out of Google’s control, but this does not necessarily matter to Google, whose motivation is mainly to drive mobile web penetration on as many devices as possible.”

“When you go to Mobile World Congress, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the entire mobile revolution is driven by technology. It is not at all. It’s driven by changes in consumer behavior,” said Paul Berney, chief marketing officer of the Mobile Marketing Association. “The task of people attending this event is to understand this.” Mobile marketing is expected to garner considerable interest this year, not least because of Facebook. Analysts at CCS Insight say that “generating revenue from mobile usage is the single biggest imperative” for the social-networking firm, which is preparing for an IPO some time in 2012. Around half of Facebook’s 845 million monthly active users interact with the social site through a mobile device, but so far the firm has not found a way of generating revenue through mobile advertising.