MWC Barcelona 2018 – trends and reflections

A lot has been said and written already on this year’s major industry event, MWC in Barcelona, our main takeout on trends discussed and displayed are summarized in the picture below.

With more than 100,000 visitors from over 200 countries, this has become an event reaching far beyond the mobile and telecom industry. You find the traditional network operators and mobile vendors announcing and showing the latest technology and products, but also more and more companies and innovators covering every dimension of the digital and connected world.

This year, MWC went Biometric, to ease access and streamline attendee experience, using facial recognition as an alternative way to access the venue. All attendees that had uploaded a photo of themselves could now choose to use biometrics instead of the badge. For a company like Fingerprints, it was of course intriguing to hear and see so much around biometrics this year. As everything gets more connected, there is an increased need for secure identification and verification, and biometrics is the most human and convenient way to solve this. Complicated passwords and PINs are not. Period.

Smart cities with connected cars, and IoT, powered by 5G

IoT and smart applications were seen in many areas, like cars, homes, wearables and even moon landers. Everything connected. 5G will enable a lot of this, and Telco operators now announce and start to roll-out out the networks. 

Nokia stand with digital city. Smart glasses by Tooz. Asu smart watch from Haier. Smart earbuds from Sony. Google Home Max smart speaker.

New mobile phone announcements, from flagships with AI and multi biometrics, to feature phones

Among the flagships announced was Samsung’s S9 with multiple biometrics and improved facial recognition with the iris scanning, LG V30S ThinQ with integrated AI and also with multiple biometrics, Sony Xperia XZ2 first mobile in the world to record 4K HDR video. Several of the newly announced phones come with Biometrics by Fingerprints. Not only super high tech, Nokia’s old iconic “Banana” phone got a revival, in form of the 8110 feature phone, now with 4G.

Biometrics in payments, fingerprint enabled cards in the center

FIDO authentication was showcased, to replace passwords, and several biometrics and authentication vendors were exhibiting this. Our partner IDEMIA had a huge booth where they demonstrated various biometrics and payments use cases and solutions, like PayByFace point of sales terminal, and wearable payment, but the “most-wanted-biometric-payment-solution” was the biometric payment card F.Code using our “T-shape” sensor aka FPC1321.

Biometrics reaching mainstream mobile phones and beyond

In many of the use cases and trends at the show, biometrics fit in perfectly. When everything gets connected there is an increased need for convenient security, which is exactly what biometrics offer.

Biometrics was talked about, showcased and as mentioned before, also used as the official way to enter the MWC using your face instead of the badge. We are in for an exciting future of biometrics!