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Mobile World Congress (MWC) is an important event for big international mobile phone manufacturers to launch new mobile phones. This year, several new models of Android phones have been launched, including the highly anticipated Nokia smartphone. Nokia returned to the mobile phone market as a classic and nostalgic brand, and has announced its four strategic directions which include securing the leading position in 5G, expanding network sales to select vertical markets with carrier-level demands, building a strong standalone software business and creating new business and licensing opportunities in the consumer ecosystem.

Nokia launched its feature phone, Nokia 3310, and mid-end smartphones, Nokia 5 and Nokia 3, embedded with Snake game and Pure Android to recall consumer memories and emphasize safety aspect of the operating system. It has specifically strengthened its mobile phone ecosystem, which is comprised of HMD Global (product design, development and sales), Nokia (the classic brand), Android (top 1 global smartphone OS) and Foxconn (the world’s largest EMS), and has tried to create a win-win situation by sharing the leading values of its partners.

Sony introduced four new Xperia XZ series models, which integrate Sony camera’s G lens, triple image processing technology and BIONZ image processor and added a temporary memory function to the camera module, making it the world’s first smartphone that can record 960fps slow motion and support pre-shoot features. Its flagship model, Xperia XZ Premium, even features a 4K HDR screen that adopts Sony BRAVIA TV display technology. It was the only demo smartphone with a built-in Snapdragon 835 processor, which achieved Gigabit Class LTE level (up to 1Gbps download speed), and awarded the best new smartphone in this year’s show.

Chinese brands, such as Huawei P10, Gionee A1, Alcatel A5 LED version and OPPO, have focused their main differentiation on lenses and will make the penetration rate of dual-camera phones raise. OPPO even announced that they do lots of effort on 5X lossless zoom dual camera technical research.

In short, we can summarize main 3 topics for MWC 2017. The first topic focused on the changes in smartphone application modes due to A.I. With the introduction of A.I. into smartphones, product development will shift from innovative thinking of hardware technology to business opportunities of interdisciplinary application services. The smart mobile terminal will gradually evolve to encompass applications such as the connection of smart home, health tracking and personalized multimedia. It will become an intelligent phone that can actively sense, communicate and link all IoT-based things in the environment. 

The second one is that future applications will focus more on information security certification and identification. With a high degree of connection with personal information and smartphones thru social networking apps, mobile payments, contacts, personal physiological data tracking apps and more, the industry should enhance smartphones’ identification ability regarding access to users’ personal information. Therefore, the “I know” identification method, such as a password or graphic input will be advanced to a “Who am I?” method that combines biological characteristics.

We will even be able to use terminal products with biometric identification functions to authorize access to other devices, such as laptops and smart watches, in order to provide a high degree of convenience and prevent the “I know” identification method from being recorded or cracked.

The third, mobile phone market trend will lead high-end mobile phone brands towards customer management and creation of new after-sales service models. We can see that the carriers or phone brands offered customers upgrade programs or rental plans for high-end smartphones in North American and Western European, in order to increase sales and replacement frequency, increasing revenue through bundled mobile phone warranty services, and making more refurbished phones available for emerging markets, such as Asia-Pacific and Africa Middle East. Therefore, it might create potential chance for mobile phone brands to enhance user experience in the emerging markets, which further strengthens customers’ brand loyalty when they come to buy new smartphones.

This year, MWC also highlighted augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR), drones, robots and A.I., and Internet of Things as future technologies.