The 3GSMWorldCongress Has Been Rebranded

Heike Scholz over at "Mobile Zeitgeist" is at the pulse of the time with her report that the 3GSMWorldCongress has been re-branded by the GSM Association into the "Mobile World Congress".

It's an interesting move but I still haven't figured out the real reasons for it... I think it's more than just a new marketing strategy. Has there been a struggle about the rights to the name? Anyone?

Removing "3GSM" from the name of the conference opens up a number of interesting possibilities for the congress to develop in the future. The official statement for the re-branding is:

"The GSMA is rebranding the 3GSM World Congress and its sister event in Asia to reflect their role encouraging the development of compelling new mobile services for end-users."

I am not quite sure how the re-branding will help that goal!? Anyone? By removing "3GSM" from the name the congress might open up potentially for other technologies to be also present. We saw a bit of this already this year with a number of people showing WiMAX at their booths.

Another possibility for the name change could be that the GSM Association now considers GSM and UMTS to be the world's dominant wireless standard implying that it's obvious that a mobile world congress can only be about this technology!?

Whatever the reasons are I am sure it's more than what they say in their official statement. Comments welcome.

Comments

[Christopher Millhouse]

Personally I think that the branding used by GSMA is irrelevant. Within the industry the event is almost universally known as "Barcelona." When it was in Cannes it was known, unsurprisingly as "Cannes." I doubt very much that this will change.

One thing that "3GSM" had was some brand presence. When someone said, "3GSM" you knew what they are talking about. "Mobile World Congress" has no presence and means little. And I had to look it up in your blog to recall what the name has been changed to. It's too long and, if they are lucky, will probably be shortened to "MWC." A rather unremarkable branding effort.

In any case GSMA doesn't tell you what to exhibit and I don't think that they ever have. This year we had a big sign saying "WiMAX." It attracted plenty of attention but not from officialdom. Just as long as you pay the extortionate price for being there.

And, at least according to the people who manage our account, there has been a bit of struggle about management rather than the name. Most of the reward for running the show was going to Informa before their mandate ran out and GSMA decided to capture it. Perhaps Informa has some rights to the name. But that is just speculation on my part.