As Mobile World Congress kicked off in Barcelona on Monday morning, Ericsson chief Hans Vestberg identified one of the event’s hottest topics – the cloud – announcing a new focus on the technology as the last part of the “connected society”.

The Ericsson chief’s theme was the connected society and the three elements that comprise it: mobility, broadband, and the cloud. Whereas previous MWC events have focused on mobility and broadband, this year’s focus is on the third element.

“As the industry changes, Ericsson has to change too,” Vestberg said. “Today we are focusing on the cloud – more specifically on connecting the clouds – as the last part of the networked society.”

The crux of this new focus is a partnership with cloud and content delivery specialist Akamai, through which Ericsson will offer a content delivery platform optimised for mobile devices.

According to Vestberg, the number of smartphones in use will increase four or five times by 2016 and the generated traffic will increase 30 times, so the end to end quality of contentent delivered becomes key.