T

he high profile 2012 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, sees record-breaking gadgets being announced, but the message is clear: the already tight competition among mobile phone makers is becoming tougher.

Having taken place in the complex of Barcelona’s scenic National Palace and historic Fira de Barcelona, Montjuic, from Feb. 27 to Mar. 1, the fair was attended by a record 67,000 people from the telecommunication sector with events ranging from new mobile device showcases, talks from industry leaders and technology presentations.

At the Mobile World Congress, Nokia unveiled a 41 megapixel smartphone (808 PureView) and cheaper Windows phone (Lumia 610) to attract and reach out to a wider range of consumers, while Chinese manufacturers ZTE, Huawei and HTC rolled out Android-based quad-core smartphones and tablets in an attempt to break into the Western market (Era, Ascend D, MediaPad 10 FHD, HTC One X).

Korea’s Samsung also made headlines as it announced a mobile phone with a built-in projector for multimedia content (Galaxy Beam); an Android tablet compatible with a stylus (Galaxy Note 10.1) and the second generation of its trendy Android-based Galaxy Tab 2.

Other notable announcements are Adobe’s Photoshop Touch application for iPad and Microsoft’s latest Windows 8.

The announcements made on the first day of this year’s four-day congress were the main attraction of The Mobile World Congress, but the subsequent three days of the fair were far more quiet, with less attendants seen across the venue.

Nokia president and CEO Stephen Elop said that despite the apparent phone-making battleship, the actual “war” is within the operating system (OS) stream.

“The industry has shifted from a battle of individual devices to a war of ecosystems. No longer was it good enough to compete with Samsung or HTC on a device-to-device basis. It didn’t really matter. The real forces have become the ecosystems, including Apple and Android,” he added.

Apple’s invention of the iPhone operating system (iOS) years ago changed the landscape of the mobile phone industry due to its system’s consumer friendliness. Android rapidly followed suit with a growing system applied to more affordable handsets.

Android, which dominated announcements in the 2012 Mobile World Congress, was the top smartphone operating system, while Apple remained the top smartphone seller in 2011.

In the previous Mobile World Congress last year, dual-core and 12 megapixel image resolution smartphones seem to have broken all imagination barriers for consumers, but only a year on, phone makers have gone even bigger to take a larger slice of the industry pie.

“Today, the connected devices market is dominated by mobile phones, but this will change in the future as a new wave of smartphones, tablets, consumer electronics and M2M devices connect everything from cars to health services and even entire cities,” said Michael O’Hara, chief marketing officer at GSM Association (GSMA), which organized the Mobile World Congress.

By 2015, global mobile industry revenues will grow to US$1.9 trillion from $1.5 trillion this year and employment by companies in the mobile ecosystem will grow to 10 million by the same year, from eight million at present, according to GSMA research.

Total devices will reach 24 billion by 2020 and the global business impact of the mobile industry is set to top $4.5 trillion the same year, the research, in partnership with Machina Research, finds.