Mobile World Congress is pretty much done and dusted for 2015, after the marathon trade show drew in crowds of over 93,000 visitors in Barcelona this week. More than 2,000 companies exhibited at the show, showcasing an incredibly broad array of mobile tech, and illustrating how mobile is pervading into all corners of modern society. The GSMA claims this year’s show grew by nine percent on 2014’s event.

Elsewhere, early economic analysis statistics, referenced by the GSMA but conducted independently, indicate that Mobile World Congress 2015 has contributed nearly half a billion Euros (€436 million) and more than 12,500 part time jobs to the local economy in Spain.

Drawing his concluding remarks on this year’s event, the GSMA CEO, John Hoffman, reflected on the numerous device launches conducted at this year’s show, including the Samsung S6 and S6 Edge, and the HTC One M9 as well as various wearable devices.

“It’s been a tremendously exciting show, with many major device launches, discussions and debate on the future of our industry and demonstrations of the cutting-edge products and services that customers are enjoying now and will experience in the future,” he said. “The industry has advanced significantly over the past decade and we look forward to the many new developments that the next ten years will surely hold.”

In a ceremony hosted by the comedy legend John Cleese, more than 40 awards were dished out to recognised leaders in various areas of the mobile industry. Some of the most notable awards covered network technology, devices, applications and gaming, music, mobile money and IoT. The most notable award winners were as follows:

No doubt planning from some quarters is underway for 2016’s Mobile World Congress already, only 50 weeks to go.

Telecoms.com’s news coverage of Mobile World Congress 2015 is sponsored by NEC.

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