Mobile World Congress (MWC) the most awaited and leading mobile industry event would be underway in a months’ time. MWC’18 to be held in Barcelona, Spain from Feb 26 to Mar 1 and likely to showcase flagship smartphones and devices from leading vendors that are to set the trends in 2018.

Strategy Analytics as usual would have a large team of analysts across various services including smartphones, wearables, tablets, drones, robots, smart home and connected cars.

Below is a quick preview of some of the likely smartphone launches, dominant themes and possible vendors set to dominate the show this year.

1. Samsung to set the tone of this year’s MWC with the launch of its new flagship smartphones. We expect Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus to debut right before the show and dominate early phase of the event. Unlike the last year, we expect this smartphone market leader go beyond just the flagships and foldable phones/ flexible displays.

    

2. HMD Nokia: While MWC’17 for Nokia under HMD was more about its revival and Deja vu with the relaunch of Nokia 3310 feature phone. We expect this year the vendor to step up its game and target the premium segment to take on the likes of Samsung and Apple with the launch of its new flagship Nokia 9. While doing so it is also likely to further strengthen its mid and lower tier portfolio too with multiple device launches.

    

3. We expect Xiaomi to make a comeback in MWC’18 and is likely to launch its next iterate of the flagship Mi series, running on the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor. While it’s new Surge chip is likely to power another Mi series variant.

    

4. More Phones from other vendors: Huawei, Lenovo-Motorola, ZTE, ASUS, TCL-Alcatel, Sony too are expected to come up with flagships and refreshed portfolio of smartphones. Some of the top smartphones in our list include: Sony Xperia XZ Pro, Moto G6 /G6 Plus and other mid-range moto smartphones, ZTE Gigabit Phone, a likely iterate to the Huawei Flagship P series, BlackBerry Keytwo.

While a good part of the new smartphone launches in MWC’18 would be about being bigger, better and faster. According to Strategy Analytics, some of the key smartphone related themes the premier mobile show of 2018 is likely to build on further include: Artificial Intelligence (AI), 5G and Flexible Displays.

Please stay tuned here for further expectations, updates and analysis to MWC’18 in the coming four weeks.