These are my notes for day 3 of the Mobile World Congress 2010, in Barcelona. For past entries, see my impressions on day 1 and my reading of the pre-summit consensus on mobile augmented reality on day 2.

This is day three of the congress and I think I am starting to get the hang of it! Orienting oneself in this maze of booths can be daunting at first, but one eventually finds the two or three exhibition halls most relevant to their business, and focuses on these areas.

The past couple of days brought me a new set of observations. I’d already noted on day 1 how much the congress was focused on hardcore technologies, with a strong showing by telco hardware vendors and video streaming/encoding/delivery, for instance, but it took me an incredulous two days to accept another conclusion.

Where is the Web?

The most strikingly absent word in all this congress was, in my opinion, “web”. Of the thousands of exhibitors, I think only one built their message around it, and it was nvidia, with banners claiming that they “power the mobile Web”. Quite a strange messaging from this video chipset vendor, which I would expect to claim to power mobile gaming, mobile video… but the web?

Other than nvidia, I think only the browser vendors were talking about the web. Opera had a decent presence, sandwiched between the enormous areas dedicated to Microsoft and Adobe; OpenWave was here too, and so were a number of browser vendors I did not know before, including for instance Bolt. Coming from North America where I suspect the mobile web usage is almost strictly limited to powerful, large-screened smartphones, one has to remember that other markets have a strong demand for Web browsing capabilities on smaller, less able handsets. The ability to download a “PC-like” browser capable of displaying CSS-styled, complex layouts on a tiny screens is a very big deal.

The absence of the “Web” word does not mean that the Web technologies are no longer relevant to the mobile world. On the contrary, I believe that no-one is talking about the Web because it has become such an integral part of mobile technologies. And thus, what used to be a buzzword has become the silent foundation, leaving more space for new darlings such as NFC, geolocation or others.

One such important buzzword this year is “mobile widget”, which in most case refers to packaged web application! In this area, one interesting announcement made during the congress was the opening of the Wholesale Applications Community. This looks like a joint effort from a number of vendors to fight the current fragmentation in mobile applications development, with Apple’s success causing every vendor and their dog to release their own apps platform and market. The announcement is still rather unclear about what technologies will be used, but it seems likely that they will build upon existing consensus on widgets.

Mobile Augmented Reality Summit

Day 3 of the congress was also the occasion for many actors in the “augmented reality” scene to come together and look at the state of the art, the state of the market, and most importantly, look at potential areas for collaboration.

And what a great meeting it was. 65 people joined the summit for more than 4 hours or passionate discussions on the themes of technology, business, user experience or privacy.

Interestingly enough, even after the summit, I still find it hard to define the scope of mobile augmented reality. At the moment, it tends to take the shape of applications superimposing layers of data (Points of Interest, most often) on a video feed, but there seems to be an agreement that this may not be, in the long run, the preferred mode of interaction. As one participant stated, “no-one likes to walk around with a mobile phone in front of their face”, and many agreed that AR was not a stated user need. Perhaps, we all agreed, we should look at Mobile AR as an enhancement to existing applications, but not necessarily standalone applications for a unique usage.

In the end, the best definition of Mobile AR (albeit vague) may be the one proposed by Vodafone’s Daniel Appelquist: Mobile AR is where the mobile platform bridges the digital and physical world.

More on the Mobile Augmented Reality summit in a matter of days, as soon as the embargo on the summit materials gets lifted.