A few days after the Mobile World Congress, it is time for reflections and conclusions. We figured the best way to reflect on this event would be to have a proper debriefing session.

We invited key execs from about twenty of Israel's leading mobile companies and several members of Cisco's corporate development group who visited Israel after the MWC, to discuss some of the main takeaways from the event.

2009, as one guest commented, "separated the men from the boys". The industry may have suffered, but survivors are more fit to face the challenges and opportunities in 2010 and on. Alex Yu, head of wireless in Cisco's corporate development, mentioned that 2009 was the year in which mobile data traffic exceeded voice packets, never to look back.

There was no argument about the key part played by apps and the app model in this year's show, but there was less unanimity around the identity of the winners. Some claimed that the operators are deemed to become a dumb pipe (and may have already conceded), while others were adamant that carriers are still better positioned than the Internet players to monetize on the mobile data revolution, leveraging their billing relationships, their data and their infrastructure. In any case, commented Lak Ananth from Cisco, the value chain is disintegrating.

Who knows the end user better? Is it the carrier, holding all the demographic and location data (but often not on prepaid users), or the Internet giant who can serve pretty good location-aware ads and services even today? Again, there was no consensus but it's clear that Google are - despite their offer for a truce - a competitor more than an ally to the mobile operators.

Android is emerging as the big winner of the 2010 MWC. The good buzz generated around the operating system is complemented by a convenient development platform and a buoyant developer ecosystem. The next battle-ground is around owning the user experience, and Google has certainly done a great job in catching up with the Apple UX, at least from the developer's point of view. And how about Symbian? “Symbian is a great operating system for making a mobile phone work; Android is a great operating system for a making a cool device”, said one participant.

China is clearly an emerging power in the mobile infrastructure realm, and will soon leave some of the handset guys behind. A lively (though slightly bleak) discussion revolved around Israel's ability to compete with the Chinese economies of scale with innovation and agility. Alex Yu mentioned a few Taiwanese vendors who made it big in China in areas you'd expect mainland corporates to dominate. Is innovation enough? Clearly there's more to succeeding in the new cut-throat reality. Even corporates like Microsoft and Cisco are finding it harder to justify the excess expenditure on an Israeli development center. Identifying gaps and addressing them quickly is a means of survival, but will it yield large companies?

Several other topics were raised and discussed, but we were far from done. If you took part in the round-table, please take a minute to fill the survey. Whether you were present or not, feel free to share your MWC takeaways and insights!