Wireless Giants Converge on Barcelona

While all roads don't lead to Barcelona, Spain, ones that do are clogged with wireless-telecommunications executives.

Revenue-building strategies for mobile-phone operators, financial services in a mobile world and how to capture more of the connected consumer's time and money—these are just some of the topics likely to be front and center as 60,000 delegates from the telecom industry meet this week for the annual Mobile World Congress. The agenda-setting event—which kicks off in the Catalan city Monday and runs through Thursday—is where operators, cellphone manufacturers, content providers, advertising gurus and, increasingly, Internet players and other assorted members of the nearly $2 trillion wireless industry gather to assess the most-coveted devices, software, services and brands. Most companies at Mobile World Congress will be looking to explain one of two things—"why they haven't done as well as they thought, or what they will be doing differently in order to do better," says Neil Mawston, a telecom analyst at Strategy Analytics.