BARCELONA, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- The 2011 edition of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) has helped to provide a vision of how people will be able to communicate in the near future.
The announcement of the launch of the Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI) on Monday showed a desire for convergence. The GTI, which counts on the support of China Mobile's President Wang Jianzhou, aims to promote the deployment of TD-LTE networks as a standard 4G mobile technology for the deployment of mobile broadband networks throughout the world.
The MWC, which closed Thursday in Barcelona after four busy days, also helped showcase the devices that will be able to make the best of the mobile broadband speed of 120Mbps.
The "Apple effect" was clear to see in Barcelona this week as several companies presented tablets to compete with the iPad.
The tablets, which allow their users to surf the Internet, send e-mail, watch videos and read books and newspapers, "are not apparatus to substitute the mobile phone, but to compliment the mobile phone," according to Blackberry's Xavier Martinez.
Blackberry will launch its "Playbook" this summer, while Motorola, Samsung, ZTE and HTC all used the MWC to present their attempts to break into an expanding market.
Some may view tablets as supplementary to mobile phones, while others still view them as new competition, which is why mobile phones also have to adapt themselves by bringing in new features in order to maintain their market share.
The standout product at the MWC this week was LG's Optimus 3D, which is the first mobile phone capable of recording and reproducing images in three dimensions.
Meanwhile Sony Ericsson presented the Xperia Play, which is a hybrid between a mobile phone and a gaming console. Apple's iPhone4 was voted the best mobile device in the GSMA's awards ceremony Tuesday night.
That same ceremony saw Wang Jianzhou from China Mobile named as chairman of the year. The presence of his company, ZTE and Huawei, all of which enjoyed high profiles in Barcelona, shows that China is a huge player in the mobile telecommunications industry.
Applications, or programs that can be downloaded by a mobile device, are experiencing astonishing growth, with 10.9 billion apps downloaded in 2010. That figure was expected to increase to 7.69 billion in 2014.
The MWC dedicated a special "App Planet" to applications with more than 200 companies exhibiting products. Higher mobile broadband speeds will only serve to boost the market for applications.
Surrounding the event were record visitor numbers, with more than 55,000 people passing through the controls at the Barcelona Trade Fair, where the event was held, and 1,300 companies from all over the world exhibiting their products, meeting potential clients and signing important agreements.
Meanwhile the city of Barcelona also benefited. All of the visitors needed hotel rooms, places to eat and means to travel around the city. The event is estimated to have contributed around 300 million U.S. dollars to the city's economy, but that is only a fraction of the amount of business in the mobile world which will be generated as a result of the four busy days at the MWC.
