Day one is in the books at Mobile World Congress Americas 2018 in Los Angeles. As attendees for several years, the nativeMsg team has generally come away with great information, informative discussion, helpful connections and a better sense of where the industry is heading.
This week, we’d love to share some of the biggest takeaways we’re seeing, so if you didn’t have a chance to come out this time around, you’ll still get an idea of where the buzz is leading!
As a conversational AI and RCS-enabled platform, nativeMsg is at this year’s MWCA to present how rich communication services (RCS) business messaging enables intelligent messaging with richer features, to a wider audience. RCS is definitely gaining momentum, with some major announcements this week, but here’s a look at what else is trending from day one:
5G for Home; Mobile Down the Line
5G is a big topic in the first few days of MWCA. It’s trending in tech news, too. In a nutshell, 5G stands to make downloading 40 times faster than 4G and latency estimates are at about one millisecond.
Verizon is rolling out 5G for home use as early as October, while Sprint is positioning their T-Mobile merger as the means to advance the 5G race to the benefit of U.S. carriers. Of course, what the network upgrade opens in possibilities is equally as buzzy:
- VR/AR use case scenarios
- Machine learnings impact on 5G flexibility and user experience
- Smart communities, cloud gaming and more
Virtual reality presentations have shown how 5G can bring what was once just a sci-fi concept––to reality, in our lifetime. Holographic video calls, real-time, next generation VR and an ultimate pathway to driverless cars are compelling and exciting use cases and presentations at the conference.
But the most important takeaway is accessibility, not the use case scenarios explored and presented throughout the conference. It will still be some time until networks are built-out to support 5G on mobile. Though, use of 4G network infrastructure, to begin, is certain. Many operators have also stated their commitment to building out for rural and hard-to-reach communities, and that’s worldwide. The cool takeaway is that 5G is coming, and it’s coming for greater accessibility for everyone–eventually.
At the conference? Look for 5G Use-Case Talk, Friday, 9/14.
The Who and How of IoT Connectivity
Wednesday’s conference schedule included much discussion on what kind of interconnectedness is needed for greater IoT accessibility and structuring. The Internet of Things is alive and well, but not exactly universally coordinated–yet. Democratizing it with centralizing devices and greater interconnectivity is the overarching theme of the conversation in 2018.
It’s particularly exciting to see how this could play out and has started to do so already. In healthcare, smart hospitals, in particular are a leading scenario, where IoT makes every monitoring system, wearable and data point accessible through the internet.
At the conferences? Look for IoT Tours happening throughout the day, Thursday, 9/13, 1:30
RCS Goes Live – Greater Engagement and Adoption
Rich Communication Services (RCS) has gotten an extra boost toward greater user adoption from Google and Samsung’s announcement this week that RCS will be interoperable between Android Messages and Samsung Messages. At Mobile World Congress, we’re seeing interest in RCS for e-commerce and CRM applications. RCS Features like better branding options, suggested replies, suggested actions and texting from a computer are the next generation upgrade to better messaging experience.
RCS is now live for a handful of businesses, and can already be used on 4G networks, and presumbably 5G in the future.
At the conference? Look for AI Consumer Applications Conference, Friday, 9/14, 11:00
We’ll be posting more takeaways through the week as the conference comes to a close. You can follow us on Twitter @nativeMsg or on LinkedIn.
