Mobile World Congress Recap: Data’s Role in the Internet of Things

It’s no wonder that this year’s Mobile World Congress broke attendance records with more than 93,000 people participating from all over the world. It’s an exciting time for both consumers and companies when it comes to mobile technology. From exciting new devices, connected cars and wearables to back-end solutions, technologies, applications and accessories, MWC provided the perfect opportunity for attendees to see, touch and interact with leading mobile innovations.

The Internet of Things took center stage. It was fascinating to see how different mobile devices can connect with one another to continue to transform both our personal and working lives. Connected cars, health devices and hospitality mobile applications (where guests can be delivered relevant information based on where they are located on property) seemed to be generating their fair share of the show buzz.

And, with all this mobile innovation comes the challenge of harnessing the big data generated by these devices, interactions and transactions. In particular, for marketers, it’s about how they can parse, analyze and use data for more behavioral predictions within the consumer lifecycle.

Many of the companies we met with were interested to learn more about how our NetAcuity geolocation technology can be layered into an existing data platform to help deliver more contextual information about users. There was also a lot of interest in our new Wi-Fi targeting solution, NetAcuity Pulse. With the use of mobile Wi-Fi networks exploding worldwide, many organizations felt like this was a long-overdue and much-needed solution to reaching today’s mobile consumers.

Overall, a very successful show! It’s not only exciting to see what the future holds for mobile innovations, but also validating to know that location will continue to play a key role in how we interact with these devices and applications.