The news from Mobile World Congress 2009 had a lack of  breakthrough technology announcements. Rather, the show’s focus was on upgrades, and execution (read, sales). The biggest  news was around application stores to compete with Apple’s App Store. In fact, so many companies announced application stores, that it appeared that GSMA had included in an application store press release in its Exhibitor package.  Even Billing/OSS vendor Amdocs got in on the action. Of course, announcing a store is easy. Filling it with applications that people regularly download is another story, probably one for Mobile World Congress 2010.

On the networking side, the news centered around LTE, a technology that will be used to migrate mobile carrier networks to 4G.  Verizon Wireless named Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson as its primary vendors for its initial LTE network.  LTE is an acronym for Long Term Evolution. True to the name, its deployment is not imminent. This was underlined by key supporter, Vodafone, which announced at the show that it moved back its anticipated deployment date until 2012.

As for the show itself, attendance dropped under 50,000, which was significantly down from recent years. Still, other Telecom trade shows would be ecstatic if they attracted 47,000 official attendees. Lower attendance also meant less people hanging around stands with nothing to do but looking at their Blackberries. The no shows also meant that the number of people better matched the size of the show floor and city. Gone were the 30 minute bathroom lines and most people were able to find rooms in town.

Rather than showcasing the latest and greatest, people came to Barcelona to do business. According to GSMA, 50% of the attendees was C-level.  Accordingly, people that I spoke to unanimously felt that the quality of meetings were very high.

Still, next year will be the real test of the success of this year’s Mobile World Congress. Most companies locked in their 2009 participation in 2008 before the current financial crisis. Strong renewals will mean that the quality over quantity approach is a sustainable business model.

I promised lots of reporting from the show. Accordingly, I have two other Mobile World Congress posts coming up. One will be about social media at Mobile World Congress. The other will be about the difference in mobile phone ownership between the United States and the rest of the world.