Mobile World Congress: Barcelona hosts a new edition of the technology fair that surpassed the mobile fair

• MWC The Mobile World Congress and Barcelona seal a "permanent" alliance

• 2022 A Mobile World Congress with economic recovery figures

has long

ceased to be the international mobile fair.

Hence the preferential use of the

brand , simply with its initials, which the organizers use to refer to this macro-event.

The annual event in Barcelona at the end of February and the beginning of March has become a kind of fantastic week for the thousand and one uses that the endless range of intelligent connectivity technology offers today and projects tomorrow through the Internet of Things. things, 5G,

...

The

, ​​in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, opens its doors again this Monday in an edition that bears the motto "Speed" and in which sectors such as health, finance, entertainment or the sports.

An edition in which, unlike in recent years, the shadow of doubt about the future of the Catalan site no longer weighs.

After a few years in which political instability, threats of transport strikes or competition from cities such as Paris or Dubai combined and seemed to bring the interruption of the idyll between the city and the world's main technology fair closer, last July , the employers' association of mobile operators

renewed its confidence in Barcelona as its headquarters and extended the contractual link with the city until 2030 (it ended in 2024).

From then on, a system of "tacit and automatic renewals" will come into operation with the aim of turning Barcelona into a "permanent headquarters".

another pavilion

Visitors who enter the fair over the next four days will be able to hear in the background the noise of the works that began a little over a month ago to expand the

Gran Via

with a new pavilion, which will be enabled, according to forecasts, to from 2026. This was one of the requirements that the GSMA had demanded from administrations for a long time to continue in Barcelona, ​​to have more space so as not to limit growth.

The MWC comes at a time when the economic crisis is fully affecting the technology industry, with massive layoffs at

,

or

, but also when the effects of the

pandemic are more part of the past than the present.

Three years ago, the GSMA canceled Mobile a few weeks after its start due to the dangers derived from the

, which in Europe at that time were still barely visible.

Despite the speculations that questioned whether that was really the main reason, the truth is that that suspension opened the subsequent trickle of incessant suspensions of events of any kind, from international congresses to the very Tokyo Olympic Games that were to be held that summer. of 2020.

The MWC is already walking towards the recovery of the 2019 data, the last appointment before the Covid crisis, but it is not close yet.

In this edition there will be 2,000 exhibitors and it is estimated that at least

will arrive .

This figure represents a jump of 20,000 attendees compared to a year ago, but it is less than the 109,000 people who attended in 2019. The situation is identical in terms of economic impact for Barcelona and its area of ​​influence.

The forecasts revolve around 350 million euros, higher than the 240 million that the show contributed in 2022, but below the 473 million generated in 2019.

visitors from asia

That the number of visitors from

is still below the last pre-pandemic appointments is the main factor hindering full recovery.

The GSMA expects 25% of this year's visitors to be Asian, of whom about 5,000 are from

.

But, above all these numbers, the employers highlight a fact that they consider more important than the total number of attendees: more than 50% of them are senior

, that is, they hold positions with decision-making power, and 21% are top executives of their companies.

For some sectors of the Barcelona economy, despite the fact that the technology fair is far from the pre-covid stage, it is still "an oasis in the middle of the low season", as defined by the new president of the Barcelona Restoration Guild, Salvador

.

The entity calculates that the average occupancy in the premises until next Thursday will be 40%, with special relevance on Monday and Tuesday nights.

The Catalan nightlife employer Fecasarm, for its part, calculates an average daily expenditure per person of about 300 euros during Mobile and has forecast a turnover of 96 million euros, 18% less than in 2019. The entity also points out that the number of new contracts will be less than the 5,000 temporary jobs of that year, although in this case he links the decrease, especially, to the elimination of the work and service modalities in the recent labor

.

According to GSMA data, since

from Cannes (France), the MWC has received 1.1 million visitors, has left a profit in Catalonia of around 5,700 million euros and has led to the creation of 148,000 temporary jobs.

Figures that will increase in the next four days during a symbiosis in which Barcelona will be Mobile and Mobile will be Barcelona.

The courts of the Mobile World Congress

The celebration of the Mobile World Congress promotes in Barcelona a large number of adjacent activities beyond technology, such as transport, restaurants or leisure, but also others that escape the eyes of the general public, such as the service protocol and rapid action of the commercial courts to address possible incidents related to patents, trademarks or design, which is designed to resolve cases within a period of 48 hours.

The protocol was activated in 2015 and, since then, the commercial courts of Barcelona have received 109 preventive writs and 24 requests for precautionary measures.

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