The 2023 edition of the Mobile World Congress was held from February 27 to March 2 in Barcelona. Over the years, MWC has become one of the top global technology and startup events, providing attendees with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the heart of innovation and experience the latest trends and technologies that are shaping the industry. This year's edition promised to highlight new behaviors for a new reality, and it has lived up to its promises. The event is definitely the reference space for business digitalization.

The MWC has welcomed more than 88,000 attendees from over 200 countries and territories worldwide, including the representation of over 2,800 organizations. This global participation highlights the importance of the MWC in the technology industry and its relevance as a must-attend event for any professional involved in business digitalization.

This year, the latest trends and key topics at the MWC have included 5G Acceleration, Reality+, Digital Assets, Artificial Intelligence, and Industry 4.0 solutions. These trends are shaping the future of the technology industry and accelerating the transformation of all businesses.

• 5G Acceleration: The 5G network promises faster speeds, lower latency, and greater connectivity, which is expected to transform the way we interact with technology. Attendees were able to see demonstrations of 5G-enabled devices, such as smartphones, laptops, and IoT devices, along with discussions on how 5G will enable new use cases in the field of smart cities, autonomous mobility, and remote surgery.

• Reality+: New digital realities, immersive, augmented, hybrid, or parallel (metaverse) are transforming the way we interact with technology, providing new complete sensory experiences. Attendees have interacted with Reality+ applications to enjoy concerts, play games, make purchases, relate to their favorite brands, or train. An exercise in making the disruptive possibilities of these technologies tangible that helps professionals imagine how the environment in which their businesses develop will be transformed.

• Digital Assets: We are initiating a new era of digital ownership that will enable greater control of our digital identities, data associated with our behaviors, and the generation and ownership of multiple native digital assets. The confusion generated by aggressive speculative models related to cryptocurrencies should not confuse us regarding the disruptive possibilities of blockchain-based solutions.

• Artificial Intelligence: AI is the star trend this 2023, providing new ways of processing, analyzing, and interpreting information and data. Attendees have been able to attend demonstrations of AI solutions and conversations and discussions have been opened about their application in different industries and businesses.

• Industry 4.0: Automation and intelligent manufacturing will be key to responding to the geostrategic evolution caused by the pandemic in the first instance and by the conflict in Ukraine in the second derived and with greater intensity. The economic globalization that has marked the global course during the last 30 years is giving way to a new globalized location or localized globalization. Global economic interdependencies remain latent and are unlikely to disappear, but will be combined with local territorial clusters that will allow the production of critical assets (from food to microprocessors) in territorial blocks that will compete with each other and will be circumscribed to consumption areas with shared sovereignties (USA + Canada, China, EU, etc.). Attendees have explored the possibilities of robotics, IoT sensing, massive automation, or digital production twins that allow greater efficiency and flexibility in manufacturing processes.

These are just some examples of what attendees saw related to the latest trends and topics at the Mobile World Congress 2023.

The emergence of these technologies, the relationship between them (a 5G network will enhance Reality+ solutions generated with AI solutions in which users will create and manage their own Digital Assets) and the combination with established technologies (the application of AI solutions to the enterprise data lake continuously fed in real-time by 5G networks managing data generated by the industrial and logistics IoT system) will be key factors for business competitiveness.

Without a doubt, once again this year the heart of the event has been 4YFN. The space to enjoy the spirit and innovation of Barcelona, the place where it is possible to identify the seed of the companies of the future and the startup ecosystem that established businesses need to create their own future.

In this edition, 4YFN brought together more than 700 startups that had the opportunity to build bridges and alliances with different companies to co-create next-generation products and services.

Once again at RocaSalvatella, we had the opportunity to provide a unique experience to our clients by creating specific and personalized tours that gave them the opportunity to witness the latest innovations up close. We believe that our efforts helped create a lasting impression on our clients, and we hope to continue providing exceptional services and experiences in the future.

In conclusion, the Mobile World Congress has established itself as the global reference event for digital business and the ideal platform for connection with the most disruptive startups. And all of this happened in Barcelona, a European reference in technological innovation and the established venue of the MWC until at least 2030.

Save the date for MWC 2024, which will take place from February 26 to 29, 2024!