MEF Member Bango share their insights on this year’s Mobile World Congress, where over 100,000 attendees descended on Barcelona to sample the latest developments in mobile Tech.
VP of Product Marketing Andy Bovingdon gives us his thoughts on the show and check out an interview with CEO Ray Anderson from their booth on the MWC show-floor.
The Mobile World Congress 2016 catchphrase, ‘mobile is everything’ could equally have been, ‘everything is mobile’. Although the big Android handset manufacturers, including HTC, LG, Sony and our close partner Samsung, all launched new handsets as usual, it was the other devices that highlighted the major, fundamental shift in our mobile market.
Mobile World Congress (MWC) showed an evolution away from traditional smartphones towards a bewildering array of connected devices. Lines to test new VR headsets were longer than those at the Barcelona metro stations which were being picketed by strikers! VR featured on many stands using new 5G networks to stream entertainment to Gear VR and Vive headsets from Samsung and HTC.
Other major themes included connected car technologies from Ford and Qualcomm, wearables from LG, Samsung and Sony and the ability to buy groceries from a Samsung Smart Fridge. MWC16 also introduced connected home, smart cities and Internet of Things (IoT) for the first time, clearly highlighting that today everything is mobile.
Andy Bovingdon
VP Product Marketing
Bango
All these devices need a way for customers to pay, a way to be billed for the products and services that their new ecosystems deliver, payment will be everything – everything must be able to pay.
Successfully enabling payments for this wide array of smart, connected devices is worlds apart from delivering credit card to websites or from mobile wallets in stores. Authenticating and confirming payment needs to be smooth, fast and reliable for all these devices to succeed.
This aligns perfectly with Bango’s vision of an inclusive payment platform for todays connected world, where payments simply work for everyone, every time. Independent of device, store, product or service. We look forward to announcing new innovations around this at #MWC17.
