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MWC: Can the show carry on like this, with so many absentees?

by Guy J Kewney | posted on 17 February 2009

Just how bad is this Mobile World Congress? One delegate remarked: "Talking to one small company I discovered that they were spending €200K on attending MWC. They will need to see €2M worth of sales to say that the trip was worthwhile." Is that right?

The question is easily answered by a straw poll of senior execs on big booths: "Yes." To bring a team of 10 people to Barcelona, find them hotels, travel and living expenses, will cost you €200K or more, for the full four days of the Congress.

The harder question to answer is "So - how many stayed away?"

First, the people who aren't here aren't all obviously here. There are people who bought an exhibition stand after MWC08. They bought the stand because it's in a prime position, and if they don't re-book, they lose the right to the prime spot. But the contract doesn't say anything about actually building a stand on the site. So they didn't. Rumour says that Cisco saved bringing 70 people this way. HP, similar.

Unsurprisingly, the show Organisers have let it be known that "off-campus hotel suite" exhibition stands will attract penalties, next year. That statement took courage, because some will simply stay away, as a result.

The quote above, from Digital Evangelist, doesn't quite give the scale of the impact of the economic downturn.

My guess (based on pretty well-informed sources) says that the number of Press here this year is, roughly, 50% of what it was last year. I happened to overhear a staff conversation during registration, which said: "How many journalists signed in Sunday?" and the answer, 400, happens to be very close to half the 800 plus of Sunday last year.

The good news is that Tuesday's photographs all show busy, bustling crowds. The bad news is that all these busy people will be gone by tomorrow morning.

Here are some questions to which official answers would be good (but not probably forthcoming):

How many delegates - who normally come with full corporate support - are here out of fear and desperation, just permitted to be here, but having to pay their own way?

Which industry sectors are thin on the ground? It's no longer an operator-driven show, even though they are still here - some of them! It's increasingly a "content and handset" exhibition, and this year's word from the backhaul community suggests they are hugely down on two years ago.

How many companies have any real fear of not being able to book a good spot in next year's show? I spoke to three CEOs who said, candidly enough as long as not quoted: "My finance director wants me to justify re-booking, and I have just a month to make the case. I probably can't."

Make no mistake, Barcelona is still the big one! Just a few hours strolling around the carpets in Hall 1 meant I bumped into a dozen people I've been meaning to contact for the last year, and discovered half a dozen neat ideas which I didn't spot in my in-box.

But the idea is being offered that "the mobile business is largely immune to the downturn." That idea, sadly, is not even vaguely credible.

The worrying trend, is that the people whose smiles are most warm, are the people selling cost-saving ideas. People like Sonus, for example, who are offering "huge cost-structure savings" to operators, are here with big order books, growing bigger. Sonus is here; others, scarily, say "The backhaul community isn't in Barcelona any more."

The MWC can survive a downturn. What it can't survive, is the loss of any of the main pillars of the mobile world. If the backhaul people head off to specialist, smaller events like the MPLS & Ethernet World Congress (and they are doing so) it means they no longer value the synergy of this show. They don't see value in talking to handset executives, content provider or developer populations.

That's the trend that has to be reversed next year.