Following the gloom and doom that surrounded the event in 2009, Mobile World Congress 2010 seemed considerably upbeat, with optimism from many of the participants. The world’s largest mobile phone industry conference takes place in Barcelona, Spain, during February every year. The key movers and shakers of the industry descend on this great cultural city every year (only in recent years - prior to that it was held in Monte Carlo and Cannes).

I have been visiting Mobile World Congress in its various forms every year since 1998, and there has definitely been a change in focus from hardware (chip and system level) in the early days, to more content and applications in recent years.

The big themes this year were around operating systems and user interfaces. Mobile health and M2M (machine-to-machine) were also high on the agenda. One particular announcement that caught my eye in relation to India was the launch of the ‘world’s cheapest phone’ – a handset from Vodafone expected to be selling for under US$15. Some of the discussion forums in India I have already looked at seem to suggest that to many Indians this is just a gimmick, since cheap handsets with better features have been available in India for a while.

What’s apparent though is that the underlying themes of this year’s conference coupled with other announcements from the ISA Vision Summit earlier in the month mean there are likely to be even greater opportunities for Indian companies in the mobile phone and wireless networks ecosystem. My question is: will Indian companies be able to rise to the challenge? You can read my thoughts on this here.

In case you can’t be bothered to click on the link to the write up, I basically say that in India has placed a stake firmly in the ground as a key global player in the mobile phone industry. India’s hardware and software system designers in mobile and wireless now have the opportunity to capitalize on the current global scenario in the mobile industry.

In addition, the announcement at the ISA Vision summit of Karnataka’s semiconductor policy links very well with this opportunity in the mobile space.

I outline why India’s challenge for start-ups in this sector could be lack of confidence. While Indian electronics design engineers have historically been good at working to a specification or brief given by their multi-national companies’ headquarters, the new era in design requires a creative mindset rather than simply a subservient mindset.

I also quote something that was said recently at a talk in London by S. Gopalakrishnan (Kris), chief executive officer and managing director, Infosys Technologies, who said that the opportunity for global companies was to test their product in emerging countries before taking the product to market in their own or other developed economies.

With an industry charged up from an upbeat annual event, there is great opportunity for India to build on this global optimism – but can India take on this challenge?