Frantic optimism about artificial intelligence’s potential to empower gadgets is set to clash with fears about trade tensions stoked by the White House at this week’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.
The annual gathering for smartphone makers, telecom operators and other connected-services providers is set to draw around 100,000 attendees to the Spanish Mediterranean port city, the day before fresh American tariffs come into force on Chinese goods.
Many exhibitors at the MWC hail from China, and will thus be paying an additional 10-percent levy to import into the United States on top of the 10 percent already imposed by Trump since he took office in January.
The billionaire president is also pushing neighbours Mexico and Canada to follow suit.
Higher costs for trade could impact the entire global tech and smartphone market if Trump keeps the China tariffs in place and extends them to other major economies like the European Union, as he has threatened.
“We expect the current geopolitical situation… to be a hot topic of conversation” at MWC, said Ben Wood, research director at CCS Insight, pointing to “ongoing uncertainty around US tariffs and sanctions”.
Many of the most important components for tech gadgets including vital semiconductors are manufactured in China.
“Nobody really knows what’s going to happen” on trade, said Pekka Lundmark, CEO of major network hardware maker Nokia, at a pre-MWC event late Sunday.
“Obviously a global tariff war would not be to anyone’s benefit,” Lundmark added, saying that his company was “calculating different alternatives based on the scenarios that we have seen” for US trade policy.
AI, AI everywhere
On Sunday, some of the many Chinese smartphone makers set to attend MWC alongside other global telecom heavyweights focused their pre-show announcements on new products and investments.
Manufacturer Honor — a spinoff from tech behemoth Huawei — said it was launching a new phase in its development that would transform it into “a global leading AI device ecosystem company”.
Future “intelligent” smartphones would come equipped with AI “agents”, developed in partnership with American firms Google Cloud and Qualcomm, who are able to take on tasks like scheduling events or reserving a table at a restaurant, Honor said.
Competitor Xiaomi for its part unveiled a new range of smartphones equipped with high-quality cameras and their own suite of AI features.
Generative artificial intelligence’s capture of tech industry attention since ChatGPT first emerged has made it a must-have for any firm developing new devices.
“AI will be an omnipresent topic at MWC, but industry watchers are experiencing a growing AI fatigue,” Wood said.
“Although AI is now the cornerstone for most product announcements…it is often hard to understand the tangible benefits” for people actually using devices, he pointed out.
“Agent” services like those shown off by Honor are one attempt to make consumers understand what they can use AI on their phones for.
Such hurdles have not kept a lid on smartphone sales, which recovered from two years of shrinkage to expand 6.3 percent in 2024 — topping 1.2 billion units according to market intelligence firm IDC.
Manufacturers are optimistic about maintaining the momentum into this year.
“The strong growth witnessed in 2024 proves the resilience of the smartphone market,” IDC research director Nabila Popal said.
Sales growth had defied “lingering macro challenges, forex concerns in emerging markets, ongoing inflation, and lukewarm demand”, she underlined.
