Techies, salespeople, and industry execs arrive in Las Vegas for the Mobile World Congress trade show

• Mobile World Congress, a mobile communications trade show, is coming to Las Vegas this week.
• This year, it focuses on enterprise transformation, AI networks, and 5G edge computing.
• This article is part of "5G and Connectivity Playbook," a series exploring one of our time's most important tech innovations.

Techies, salespeople, and industry executives are arriving in Nevada this week for MWC Las Vegas, which kicks off today.

Big-name companies are set to be in attendance, with speakers from Nvidia, Salesforce, and UScellular giving presentations or panel talks.

The annual mobile-communications trade show brings more than 250 exhibitors, sponsors, and partners to the Las Vegas Convention Center in Sin City from Tuesday to Thursday.

"MWC Las Vegas 2024 is North America's top event for businesses and industries looking to harness the power of 5G and AI," Lara Dewar, chief marketing officer of the conference's organizer, GSMA, told Business Insider. "It brings together leading experts in 5G technology, showcasing real-life use cases that demonstrate how 5G, edge computing, and IoT are transforming industries, driving innovation, and solving critical business challenges."

5G technology is on track to add $210 billion in GDP to the North American economy by 2030, GSMA's "Mobile Economy North America" report said.

Key themes at MWC this year include enterprise transformation, AI networks, and 5G edge computing.

"5G is at a pivotal point at the moment, in particular when it comes to the opportunities for B2B business," Dewar said. "Telcos are looking to monetize their investments in 5G and they need to look beyond core telecom solutions and service areas, which offer limited headroom for growth. Enterprise spending on tech services, such as cloud and data center, cybersecurity, IoT, analytics, AI, blockchain and network APIs — is around five times the spend on traditional communications at $1.16 trillion in 2023."

Research that GSMA Intelligence released this month suggests there's an addressable market of more than $400 billion, or roughly 35% of the current mobile-operator revenue base globally, for telecommunications companies trying to drive revenue in the business-to-business space.

Over its three days, the conference is scheduled to feature sessions on applications of 5G and connected technology in everything from transportation and healthcare to homeland security and entertainment. Sponsors and partners this year include Verizon, Qualcomm, T-Mobile, Cisco, Microsoft, and Booz Allen.

Major phone makers have launched 5G-enabled devices in recent years, with Samsung launching its first 5G-compatible phone in 2019 and Apple doing so in 2020. This year, artificial-intelligence features were the key focus for smartphone makers, with Apple announcing Apple Intelligence and Samsung and Google announcing new AI features for their respective Galaxy and Pixel lines.

Ulf Ewaldsson, T-Mobile's president of technology and one of the speakers for the conference's opening keynote Tuesday, said it's "an incredibly exciting time" in the industry.

"Right now, we're at a bit of a crossroads in the 5G journey. We're about halfway through its lifecycle," he said. "There's major themes beyond 5G standalone to keep an eye on, like AI and 5G Advanced. The most exciting thing to me about MWC Americas this year is sharing the progress we've made to empower businesses to leverage the power of 5G like never before, with powerful capabilities like network slicing benefiting across different industries and enterprises."

The trade show in Vegas comes more than seven months after Mobile World Congress Barcelona, which is also hosted by GSMA. That conference attracted device makers including Motorola, Xiaomi, OnePlus, Lenovo, and the AI-pin company Humane.

For the Vegas conference, notable speakers include Nvidia's senior vice president for telecommunications, Ronnie Vasishta; Verizon Global Services' president, Shankar Arumugavelu; the Department of the Air Force's chief information officer, Venice Goodwine; and Randi Zuckerberg, the CEO of Hug and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's sister.