In a GSM Association keynote address before an audience of 1,800 industry professionals at the Mobile World Congress, Ericsson President & CEO Hans Vestberg showed examples of innovation, research ideas, and business models that are already coming to life in the Networked Society.
He spoke about the impact of the Networked Society on individuals, businesses, and on a greater societal level. He revisited the company's vision of 50 billion connected devices, which could happen faster than expected. He also demonstrated a social-network type of interface to maintain simplicity for interactions among devices. Vestberg invited the President of the Universal Music - Sweden, Per Sundin, to share the experience of how the music industry was forced to transform during the early 2000s.
"With global mobile penetration at around 85 per cent since Q4 2011, mobile subscriptions now totalling around six billion, and the realization that anything benefiting from a connection will have one, it won’t take that long to add up to 50 billion," said Vestberg.
"Change will never again be this slow. We learned that the key success factors are providing an amazing consumer experience, and enabling simple and reliable payment methods. Now, the Swedish music industry is healthier than it was 10 years ago," said Sundin.
He presented progress from the Ericsson-Akamai alliance introduced last year in Barcelona as the Mobile Cloud Accelerator (MCA) solution. Visionary demonstrations were also part of the speech, and Ericsson showcased projects within the automotive industry that provide machine-to-machine communication for sending traffic safety warnings to avoid traffic accidents, as well as innovative ways of using the mobile network to control the charging of electric cars.
In a follow-up to the capacitive coupling demonstration that premiered at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, Vestberg invited research scientist Jan Hederén onstage to show the transfer of data from one device, through the body, to a big screen.
