MWC Asia: It's a dude's world in telecom

It's a man's world: the mobile industry and the China government have that in common. The MWC Shanghai opening ceremony Wednesday concluded with all the VIPs on stage - that's 11 men from the GSMA, the Chinese operators and several layers of the Chinese government. Plus one woman, Sihan Bo Chen, head of Asia for GSMA Ltd, who acted as interpreter for CEO John Hoffman.

China Telecom chairman Yang Jie didn't stint on the historical context, starting his presentation with the dawn of civilisation 8000 years ago.

NTT DoCoMo's new CEO, Kazuhiro Yoshizawa, said the operator had defied the global decline in revenue by its expansion into non-traditional services, in particular its d+ content platform and retail loyalty scheme. It is also innovating with “tapless”, or touchless, phone functionality: for example, being able to make a call by shaking the phone or hanging up by setting it down.

From a GSMA announcement today: By 2020, 50 billion IoT devices will be connected, of which 10 billion will be in China. That's the same ratio as today: 5 billion globally and 1 billion in China.