Forget Zuckerberg, behind the scenes the real deals get done at Mobile World Congress

You can’t miss the headlines plastered across the media celebrating the latest phones, wearable gadgets and unexpected celebrity appearances, this week is Mobile World Congress, the biggest show on earth for the mobile industry.

Over 90,000 people descended upon Barcelona along with Will.i.am, who was in town to punt his latest range of wearable tech tat that I’m sure you will find in the bargain bucket bin of your local phone shop by Easter.

Zuckerberg shepherds his VR flock

Mark Zuckerberg was quickly crowned “the man” of this year’s event, for his cameo appearance at Samsung’s press event (pictured above).

Samsung’s product launches are the stuff of legend. They’re famed for their lavish cringeworthy performances of ostentatious grandeur. This year, in what many press photographers captured as a hideous vision of the future, Zuckerberg marched through the audience like a lost shepherd, except his flock were all oblivious as he wandered through a sea of press all wearing VR headsets like they were about to go out of fashion. Which leads one to ponder, if everybody’s in virtual reality, was he really even there? 

Deals done

Attending the conference for the first time, what struck me was how different it was experiencing it first hand, compared to the headlines in the press. 

At its heart, Mobile World Congress is a trade show. It’s where people come to get deals done and get ahead.

On my flight to Barcelona deals were flying before the plane even took off. In the boarding lounge I ran into startups, investors and the good and great of London’s tech scene. Once on board, within minutes two startups had made friends with a representative from the Irish Development Agency, who did a great job of selling the idea of moving to Dublin without spelling out the obvious tax advantages enjoyed by the likes of Facebook and Google.

Once that deal was sewn up, UK Digital Industries Minister Ed Vaizey, who recently signed up in the YES camp for the EU referendum, headed to his seat looking poised to put Britain on the map in Barcelona.

My trip was already off to a great start before I’d left the runway. 

Mobile World Congress is so brilliantly well organised that it puts most conferences in London to shame. Readers from outside the UK – my sincere apologies on behalf of the country if you’ve ever had the misfortune of going to an event at the Excel Centre. 

At MWC I skipped the queues and picked up my visitor pass at the airport. Staff are on hand throughout the city, from the airport, to local metro stations and throughout the conference centre, ready to point you in the right direction and help you get straight to business.

After touring the usual suspects of HTC, LG and Samsung, all touting near identical Android slabs of metal and glass, (if you really do care, here’s the short version: longer battery life, better cameras and a clone of Apple Pay, a year too late), I turned to the lesser known halls where you can find the next challenger brands from China. 

 Do not underestimate the scale of what’s happening in China. I visited row after row of stands from brands you’ve never heard of that are shipping hundreds of thousands of units every month to countries like India, Pakistan and Indonesia. You won’t know them, but you’ll recognise the products. I saw fake iPhones, MacBooks, Windows tablets, you name it, China can make it, for about half the price. There were even fake Huawei devices, which some might find quite meta as some would point out they were also inspired by iPhones themselves. A copy of a copy of a copy, you might say.

$46 Chinese iPhones

Buyers from Poland to Pakistan were queuing up to do deals and buy these knock-offs at trade prices. The trade going rate for a gold almost iPhone was just $46 if you have the cash for 1000 units. One company told me they’re already the market leader in Pakistan, shipping over 600,000 units a month. The devices are sold as OEMs, which means they’re unbranded and the buyer then marks them with a brand known in their own home country, which they explained is also a clever way of getting around any difficult design trademark issues with Apple et al.

With all the media hype around an event like this its easy to forget that trade shows are at their very heart, a trade show. Away from the main stage the halls were buzzing with excitement about the next big deal to be done. These brands might seem small to you today, but they’re growing at an astonishing speed with plans to take on Europe next.

In the narrow halls of Mobile World Congress, I got a taste of future, without even having to put a VR headset on.