I’m writing this editorial on the flight back to London from MWC in Barcelona and just grateful that it is more or less on time – and flying – as earlier today, both London Heathrow and Dublin were closed because of the weather. It’s cold in the UK, but our layout specialist is currently ‘enjoying’ -20 deg C temperatures, so I feel as thought I got off lightly!
Most of what I saw at MWC was, frankly, dull. It’s not the first time I’ve said that about the show, but it was particularly so this year, with no smartphone product really standing out. Samsung made huge efforts to promote its S9 and S9+, but in the end the message was really only, it’s a bit better in lots of ways. As we see from Ray Soneira’s tests in MDM, the display reaches new heights in terms of accuracy and performance, but, again frankly, there aren’t any bad displays even on budget phones these days.
AR and VR was interesting, with a chance for me to try the new HTC Vive Focus standalone product, which is currently being sold in China. It’s got a better display resolution than the Vive, and looked good. Qualcomm also had its 845 reference platform which we tried and that also worked well. This includes higher resolution displays and looked good, but the gaze recognition which is built in to the headset was not being shown at MWC.
Flexenable of the UK had some interesting flexible LCDs that could be very interesting and we had a chance to spend more time with LetinAR, which has a very interesting ‘pin mirror’ optical solution for AR glasses. It’s very cool, but the high tooling cost could mean it really needs adoption by a giant brand to get it going. Still, it is promising.
I also got the chance to try the Vuzix Blade smartglasses which are the nearest thing seen to a consumer sunglasses form factor and with good optics, based on the firm’s own waveguide. The reasons for some of the recent investments in the firm become apparent once you have tried the Blades.
Display component suppliers were very thin on the ground – Samsung was running its usual MWC ‘everything is secret’ policy and we couldn’t even find anyone at Tianma’s Meeting Room although we went back multiple times. Lots of vendors that have previously had booths just had ‘meeting rooms for customers’, this time. Times are hard in mobile.
Probably the most impressive display innovations at the show were in the automotive area, with Audi and Daimler both showing very impressive real cars – not just concepts. The full glass dashboard is finally arriving, with a vengeance!
On the non-display side, 5G developments are really ramping up very fast. It’s phenomenal technology with high bandwidths and very low latency. However, there,’s a ‘but’ coming…
The technology is being developed rapidly by technology companies that want to sell systems and devices, but the ROI for operators is far from clear. Autonomous cars really need 5G and 5G needs the amounts of data that they will bring, but consumers are already proving very resistant to the idea of monthly subscriptions for car services. IoT really needs the vast capacity for devices that 5G will bring, but again big monthly charges are unlikely to be a popular pre-condition.
It’s hard to see car users and SmartHome users taking expensive contracts to allow the connections and which would feed the growth of infrastructure. The infrastructure is also very short range compared to 3G and 4G, so huge numbers of installations will be needed. Even in the rich developed countries, it may be hard to justify the cost on the basis of increasing revenues. How many of you would like to pay more monthly just for faster downloads, especially as the latest 4G phones, in the right conditions can download at up to 1.2Gbps?
Of course, the high bandwidth needed for 4K or bigger 360º video on headsets will also love 5G, but how many users will pay big monthly fees?
Still, that small problem didn’t stop the massive hype around 5G at the event. My guess is that once someone starts, and that will be later this year in some regions, competitive pressure will drive adoption, but making the technology pervasive is going to take a lot of time, I fear.
Bob
